Socrates 470 BC – 399 BC
Socrates was a classical Athenian philosopher credited as a founder of Western philosophy. He wrote nothing himself; his ideas survive through the dialogues of his students, chiefly Plato and Xenophon. His method of inquiry, the Socratic elenchus, used persistent questioning to expose contradictions in conventional belief. He was tried and executed in 399 BC on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. His insistence that the unexamined life is not worth living established ethics as a central concern of philosophy.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Ancient Greek
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Socrates:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“I know that I know nothing.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“Be as you wish to seem.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”
Quotes that are not actually from Socrates
These lines are widely circulated as Socrates, but they do not appear in Socrates's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
This line was written by the Scottish minister and author John Watson, under the pen name Ian MacLaren, in an 1897 Christmas message published in The British Weekly. The original phrasing was 'Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.' It has been misattributed to Plato, Socrates, Philo of Alexandria, and others, but does not appear in any of their works.
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“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
This saying is sometimes credited to Socrates and sometimes to Eleanor Roosevelt or Henry Thomas Buckle, but no original source has been verified for any of these attributions. It does not appear in any dialogue of Plato or Xenophon, nor in Diogenes Laertius. The earliest verifiable form, 'Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people,' surfaces in compilations from the early 20th century.
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“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
This line is a modern English paraphrase of a passage in Plutarch's essay On Listening to Lectures, where Plutarch writes that 'the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.' Plutarch wrote five centuries after Socrates and the line is not attributed to Socrates in any classical source.