1001Philosophers

Aristotle vs Socrates on Knowledge

Socrates' philosophical method is the elenchus — the cross-examination of his interlocutors' beliefs, with the disclaimer that he himself knows nothing. Aristotle inherits the Socratic conviction that virtue and knowledge are related but converts the practice into a system: knowledge has a structure of demonstrative sciences with their own first principles, and the virtues are habituated dispositions investigated by the same methodical inquiry. Where Socratic knowing is the recognition of one's ignorance, Aristotelian knowing is the systematic grasp of how things are.

About this topic

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. Philosophers have asked what distinguishes knowledge from mere opinion, whether it requires certainty or can be probabilistic, and how perception, reason, memory, and testimony each contribute. Ancient skeptics challenged the possibility of knowledge altogether, while rationalists located its source in reason and empiricists in experience. Contemporary epistemology investigates justification, reliability, and the social conditions under which beliefs count as knowing.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full Aristotle vs Socrates comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Knowledge quotes hub.

Representative quotes on knowledge

Aristotle on knowledge

  • “All men by nature desire to know.”

    Metaphysics Book I, 980a.21 : Opening paragraph of Metaphysics | Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge. | The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10

  • “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

    Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

  • “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history, for poetry expresses the universal and history only the particular.”

    διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον λέγει.

  • “My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.”

    Letter to Alexander the Great as quoted by William Whewell , History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), Ch. 2, Sect. 2

  • “Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being affected . To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned.”

    1b25-2a10; J. L. Ackrill (tr.), 1984-1995

All 10 Aristotle quotes on knowledge →

Socrates on knowledge

  • “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

    Variant: The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. | Socrates II: xxxi . Original Greek: ἓν μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ ἓν μόνον κακόν, τὴν ἀμαθίαν

  • “I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed ... from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.”

    Plato , Symposium , 175d

  • “Plato , Symposium , 175d”

    I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed ... from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.

  • “It would be better for me... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.”

    Gorgias , 482c

  • “Oh dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”

    Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus , 279

All 9 Socrates quotes on knowledge →

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