I prefer nothing, unless it is true.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old.

I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.