Socrates's life and thoughts!

 Oh, man, Socrates! That guy was the ultimate ancient troll, but in a wise way. Picture this: it's around 400 BCE in Athens, and here's this old dude with a scruffy beard, wandering around barefoot, stopping random people in the street, and asking them annoying but deep questions.

Socrates didn't write anything down-zero books, no blog posts, nothing. Everything we know about him comes from his students, mainly Plato. And according to Plato, Socrates was basically the king of asking, "Are you sure you know what you think you know?"

His whole deal was the Socratic Method-instead of just telling people what's right or wrong, he'd ask a million questions until they either admitted they didn't know squat or had a full-on existential crisis. Like, imagine if someone said, "I know waht justice is!" Socrates would go, "Oh really? Define it." And then just keep poking holes in their argument until they got super confused. Classic Socrates move.

This made him popular with young people(because who doesn't love seeing a know-it-all get roasted?), but very unpopular with powerful people. They eventually accused him of "corrupting the youth" and "not believing in the gods." So, in 399BCE, they put him on trial. Did he try to save himself? Nope! He basically gave the jury a TED Talk about how they were wrong, and they sentenced him to death.

His punishment? Drinking hemlock poison. And instead of running away (which his friends literally begged him to do), he just went, "Eh, death isn't that scary. It's either a great nap or I get to chat with dead philosophers. Win-win!" And then he drank it. Absolute legend.

His big ideas?

·Know thyself-Admit that you don't know everything; that's the first step to wisdom.

·Question everything-Especially people in power.

·The unexamined life is not worth living-Basically, don't go throuhg life like a mindless NPC.

So yeah, Socrates was kind of like that one friend who never lets you just say something dumb without challenginig you on it. Annoying? A little. But also kind of a genius.