Although no complete works by him have survived to the present day, many fragments of his writings have been preserved through quotation by later ancient writers. 535 – c. 475 BC), whose name is often Latinized as Heraclitus, was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from the city of Ephesos in Asia Minor. The vast majority of the quotes I will be addressing in this article are merely misattributed, but a few of them are outright fake. I consider a quote “fake” if it appears to me that the quote was invented as part of a deliberate hoax. Each individual quote that I am debunking in this article has its own sub-section, the beginning of each of which will be designated by a smaller heading with the first few words of the quote written in bold.įor the purpose of this article, I will distinguish between quotes that I consider merely “misattributed” and quotes that are outright “fake.” I consider a quote “misattributed” if it is a quote that was originally in circulation either anonymously or under a different name that somehow at some point accidentally got attributed to the wrong person. Each section will begin with a brief “background” sub-section briefly explaining who the person the section is devoted to was and why there are quotes that are misattributed to them. These sections are arranged in chronological order based on when the person that the quote is attributed to lived. Because of this, I have grouped quotes that are wrongly attributed to the same person from ancient times together into sections with big headings. As I mentioned earlier, this list is by no means intended to be even remotely comprehensive and just because a quote does not appear on this list does not necessarily mean that the person it is attributed to really said it. I will debunk some of the misattributed quotes in that article in this one, but I will also debunk some others you may have seen elsewhere. Apparently neither of these things are the case. One would think that a person with a law degree would know better than to trust unsourced quotes attributed to famous philosophers or that Psychology Today would have some kind of fact-checking system in place. It turns out the reason why the “wisdom” of these quotes is so “surprising modern” is because nearly all the quotes on the list are either modern quotes misattributed to ancient Greeks and Romans or modern paraphrases of things ancient Greek or Roman writers actually wrote that are falsely given as direct quotes. For instance, here is an article published by Psychology Today on 26 June 2014 titled “Surprisingly Modern Wisdom From Ancient Greeks and Romans.” The article is written by a certain Toni Bernhard J.D. Even if the quote does have a citation to a specific work written by the author in question, it is usually best to check that work to make sure that the quote is really there before posting the quote somewhere new online.Įven people who should know better routinely fall for fake and misattributed quotes. If you ever see a quote somewhere attributed to someone who lived in ancient times and it does not have an exact citation to the exact ancient source in which the quote appears, it is best to assume that the quote is probably either misattributed or fake. The unfortunate fact is, the vast majority of all quotes you see on the internet or in books of quotations are either misattributed or outright fake.
Timeless quotes socrates full#
A massive problemįake and misattributed quotes are a massive problem, especially on the internet, but also in those books full of witty, wise, and easily digestible quotations that people often keep on coffee tables or by their bedsides. I cannot possibly hope to address all of them in this article, because there are far too many, but I will address a few of the more popular ones. Misattributed quotes of this nature are absolutely rampant on the internet and in popular books of wise quotations. Now I am going to treat a whole different beast: quotes attributed to people from ancient times that are entirely misattributed. People who have been following my website for a while may recall that I wrote an article about real ancient quotes that have been misunderstood or misinterpreted back in August 2018.
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