Socrates and Plato Quotes: 12 Verified, 20 Famous Fakes
Socrates wrote nothing down. Almost everything we know he said comes through Plato’s dialogues, written after his trial and death in 399 BC — which is why the internet is full of “Socrates quotes” he never said.
Of the 30 quotes below, 12 are checked word for word against Benjamin Jowett’s 1871 translation (public domain), with the dialogue and Stephanus number, like Apology 38a, so you can find each in any edition. The rest are marked “attributed”: old sayings we could not trace to a dialogue. Below them are 20 famous fakes, each with its real origin.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Philosophy begins in wonder.
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
Let him who would move the world first move himself.
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.
Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
Understanding a question is half an answer.
An honest man is always a child.
Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of.
No one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
The worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
There is a victory and defeat—the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats—which each man gains or sustains at the hands, not of another, but of himself.
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
At the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him before.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
Often attributed to Socrates and Plato — but not theirs
These circulate under the name above, but the record points elsewhere. Here is where each one actually comes from.
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I know that I know nothing.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Not in Plato or any ancient source in these words. It is a modern compression of Apology 21d, where Socrates says of a man reputed wise: "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know" (Jowett).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Not in Plato or any ancient source in these words. It is a modern compression of Apology 21d, where Socrates says of a man reputed wise: "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know" (Jowett).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Written by the Scottish minister Ian Maclaren (John Watson) in 1897 as "Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle." Later credited to Plato and Socrates.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Not in Plato or any ancient source in these words. It is a modern compression of Apology 21d, where Socrates says of a man reputed wise: "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know" (Jowett).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Only the first half has an old attribution: Joseph Addison quoted "content is natural wealth" as a saying of Socrates in The Spectator (No. 574, 1714) and added "luxury is artificial poverty" himself.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Spoken by a fictional character named "Socrates" — a gas-station attendant — in Dan Millman's novel Way of the Peaceful Warrior (1980).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: No ancient source. The earliest strong match is an 1901 autobiography by Charles Stewart, who credits the idea to the historian Henry Thomas Buckle; the snappy modern wording is also pinned on Eleanor Roosevelt.
Research: quoteinvestigator.com
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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.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: No ancient source. The joke surfaces in 20th-century collections — credited to Socrates in 1935 and 1949, and to the English wit Sydney Smith in 1955.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: First appears in this form in the 1990s. It loosely echoes Plutarch's essay On Listening to Lectures: the mind "is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting."
Research: quoteinvestigator.com
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I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Not in Plato or any ancient source in these words. It is a modern compression of Apology 21d, where Socrates says of a man reputed wise: "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know" (Jowett).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: From Isocrates' letter To Demonicus (4th century BC), not Socrates — the names are easy to confuse.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: A 1907 paraphrase by the Cambridge student Kenneth John Freeman in his dissertation Schools of Hellas, summarizing old complaints about the young. It was later quoted as if Socrates had said it.
Research: quoteinvestigator.com
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The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: No ancient source has been found. It was ascribed to Socrates in Stephen Covey's Principle-Centered Leadership (1990).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Appears in no ancient writing. The earliest traces are personal websites in the 2000s.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
Usually credited to Socrates
Actually: Psychologist Manuel J. Smith's own summary of Socrates' teaching in his 1975 book When I Say No, I Feel Guilty — later quoted as Socrates' words.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Usually credited to Plato
Actually: A paraphrase from classicist Werner Jaeger's Paideia (vol. II), summarizing a point in Plato's Protagoras (360d). Plato never wrote this sentence.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
Usually credited to Plato
Actually: Not in Plato. It first appears attributed to Plato in Sir John Lubbock's The Pleasures of Life (1889).
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Usually credited to Plato
Actually: Not in Plato. The earliest match is Richard Lingard's pamphlet A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman (1670): "you will then learn more of him in one hour, than in seven Years Conversation."
Research: quoteinvestigator.com
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We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Usually credited to Plato
Actually: Not in any of Plato's writings, and not found in print at all until recent decades.
Research: en.wikiquote.org
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The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Usually credited to Plato
Actually: A modern paraphrase of Republic 347c, where Plato actually wrote: "the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself" (Jowett). That line is in the list above.
Research: en.wikiquote.org