William Butler Yeats? Plutarch? Socrates? Plato? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: There is a superb quotation about education that I have encountered many times. Here is a collection of examples with attributions that I have been accumulating. None of the examples came with citations:
- Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel —Socrates
- Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. —William Butler Yeats
- Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. —Plutarch
- The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. —Plutarch
What do you think? Who should properly be given credit, and what was the original statement? It is embarrassing to find that even educators who should be sensitized to the problems of improper or non-existent citations are sometimes careless. But my criticism is muted because determining a proper ascription can be difficult, as your website illustrates.
Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has located no substantive evidence that Socrates or William Butler Yeats produced one of these sayings. These two attributions apparently are incorrect.
This family of statements probably originated with a passage in the essay “On Listening” in Moralia by the Greek-born philosopher Plutarch who lived between 50 and 120 AD.1 The following excerpt was translated by Robin Waterfield for a 1992 Penguin Classics edition. Boldface has been added to excerpts:2
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbours for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his innate flame, his own intellect, …
Here is an alternative translation of the first sentence published in the 1927 Loeb Classical Library edition:3
For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Continue reading “Quote Origin: The Mind Is Not a Vessel That Needs Filling, But Wood That Needs Igniting”