By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

The saying is a wry piece of marital humor built on a paradox: marriage is recommended regardless of outcome because either result yields a benefit—domestic happiness or the hard-won wisdom that comes from enduring difficulty. It plays on the stereotype of the philosopher as someone forged by adversity, suggesting that suffering can be intellectually productive. In quotation culture it is often used to frame marriage as a formative life choice and to cast personal misfortune as a source of insight. However, because the attribution to Socrates is doubtful, the line is best read as a later epigram in a “Socratic” tone rather than reliable evidence of Socrates’ views on marriage.