Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

The saying ranks conversation by its object: ideas (abstract principles), events (happenings), and people (personalities and gossip). Its force lies in urging a shift from the personal and ephemeral toward the conceptual and enduring—an implicit defense of intellectual curiosity, generalization, and ethical restraint in speech. Although often linked to Socrates because he is emblematic of philosophical inquiry, the sentiment functions more as a modern aphorism about discourse and character than as a recoverable classical dictum. Read charitably, it is less a rigid hierarchy than a prompt to examine what our talk reveals about our habits of mind.