Fake and Misattributed Ancient Quotes

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. Now I am going to treat a whole different beast: quotes attributed to people from ancient times that are entirely misattributed. Misattributed quotes of this nature are absolutely rampant on the internet and in popular books of wise quotations. 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.

A massive problem

Fake 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. 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.

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. 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.

Even people who should know better routinely fall for fake and misattributed 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. 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.

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. Apparently neither of these things are the case. 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. 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.

A few notes and protocols

This is going to be a long article. Because of this, I have grouped quotes that are wrongly attributed to the same person from ancient times together into sections with big headings. These sections are arranged in chronological order based on when the person that the quote is attributed to lived. 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. 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.

For 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. I consider a quote “fake” if it appears to me that the quote was invented as part of a deliberate hoax. The vast majority of the quotes I will be addressing in this article are merely misattributed, but a few of them are outright fake.

Herakleitos of Ephesos

Background

Herakleitos of Ephesos (lived c. 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. 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.

“There is nothing permanent…”

Many of the quotes misattributed to Herakleitos online are loose paraphrases of actual quotes from him. For instance, here is a quote that is often attributed to him:

“There is nothing permanent except change.”

This statement is a very, very loose paraphrase of something Herakleitos really wrote. Herakleitos certainly would have agreed with the sentiment behind this statement, but he never expressed it in quite these words. A real fragment from Herakleitos quoted by the Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 427 – c. 347 BC) in his dialogue Kratylos in the passage 402a reads as follows in Ancient Greek:

“πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει”

Translated into English, this literally means “Everything changes and nothing remains the same.” It is not quite as catchy as the misquotation “There is nothing permanent except change,” but it conveys essentially the same meaning.

“…for it’s not the same river…”

Another quote falsely attributed to Herakleitos that is actually a loose modern paraphrase of something he really said is this one:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

The first part of the quote is correct; Herakleitos really did write, “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης,” which means, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Like the previous quotation, this one is quoted by Plato in his dialogue Kratylos 402a. The second part of the quotation, however—the part about “it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”—does not come from any ancient sources and appears to be a modern explanation of the meaning of the quote that somehow became confused as part of the quote itself.

ABOVE: Heraclitus, painted in around 1630 by the Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Moreelse, showing the author’s imagining of what Herakleitos might have looked like, based on traditional iconography

Perikles, son of Xanthippos

Background

Perikles (lived c. 495 – 429 BC) is renowned as the greatest statesman of classical Athens. He led the Athenians at the time when Athens’ power and cultural influence were at their peak—a time that has been called both the “Golden Age of Classical Athens” and the “Age of Perikles.” Naturally, numerous quotes about politics, government, and citizenship have become misattributed to him.

“Just because you do not take an interest…”

One of the more popular quotes falsely attributed to Perikles is this one:

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

This is a wise quote and a witty one at that, so it is no surprise it is attributed to someone famous. Unfortunately, as you may have guessed already, this quote never appears in any ancient sources. In fact, this quote seems to be only a year older than I am. The earliest mention I can find of this quote comes from the book For Girls Only: Wise Words, Good Advice by Carol Weston, published in 1998 by Avon Books, which states:

“In 430 BC, Pericles said, ‘Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.'”

It seems to me like the author of this book apparently thought this was something Perikles said in his famous “Funeral Oration,” which is paraphrased by the Athenian historian Thoukydides (lived c. 460 – c.  400 BC) in Book Two of his book Histories of the Peloponnesian War. Perikles’s Funeral Oration was delivered in the winter of 431–430 BC and Thoukydides’s version of it is one of the most famous speeches ever written. It talks about the ideals and principles of ancient Athens’ democratic government at the time when Perikles was alive.

The problem is that, nowhere in that speech does Thoukydides ever attribute anything to Perikles that sounds even remotely like the phrase “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” In fact, that very phrase is very much out of line with the overall tone of the speech, which is very solemn and sanctimonious.

It is also ironic that this quote supposed from Perikles seems to originate from an advice book for young girls, given that Thoukydides actually does attribute the following “advice” for women to Perikles in his Funeral Oration, as translated by J. M. Dent:

“On the other hand if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men whether for good or for bad.”

If Thoukydides’s portrayal of Perikles is accurate, it would seem Perikles did not want women involved in political life at all. You can read more horribly misogynistic quotes from ancient writers in my article “Ancient Greek Views on Women” that I published on 7 June 2019.

ABOVE: Painting of the Athenian politician Perikles addressing the Assembly by the nineteenth-century German painter Philipp Foltz

Thoukydides, son of Oloros

Background

The ancient Athenian historian and general Thoukydides, whom I have already mentioned in the preceding section, is widely regarded as one of the greatest historians from all of antiquity. He is known for his book Histories of the Peloponnesian War, which describes the events of the Peloponnesian War, which was fought from 431 BC until 404 BC between the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. Thoukydides’s history only goes up to the year 411 BC, when it suddenly leaves off in mid-sentence, indicating that Thoukydides died, leaving his manuscript unfinished. Thoukydides is known for his political realism. Naturally, many quotes expressing grim or realistic views on politics and military matters have become misattributed to him.

“A nation that makes…”

One quote that is often misattributed to Thoukydides online is the following:

“A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by fools.”

This quote never appears anywhere in Thoukydides’s Histories of the Peloponnesian War and it is never attributed to Thoukydides in any surviving ancient source. Instead, this quote appears to actually be a paraphrase of a quote from page 85 of Sir William Francis Butler’s biography of the British major-general Charles George Gordon, which was first published in 1889—roughly 2,300 years after Thoukydides’s death. Butler’s original quote reads:

“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”

My guess is that this quote became misattributed to Thoukydides because it sounds like the sort of thing Thoukydides might have said. Thoukydides was, after all, both a general and a historian, so it is easy to see why someone would think that he might have said something like this. Unfortunately for the people misattributing this quote to Thoukydides, though, Thoukydides never actually said this.

ABOVE: Modern plaster cast currently held in the Pushkin Museum of a Roman marble copy of a fourth-century BC Greek bust intended to represent the historian Thoukydides

“Peace is only an armistice…”

In the 2017 DC Entertainment film Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins with a screenplay written by Allan Heinberg and a story written by Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, and Jason Fuchs, there is a scene in which Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot) is portrayed conversing with the German general Erich Ludendorff (played by Danny Huston). General Ludendorff says to her, “Peace is only an armistice in an endless war.” Wonder Woman immediately recognizes this as a quote from Thoukydides and Ludendorff replies, “You know your ancient Greeks. They understood that War is a God. A God that requires human sacrifice.”

The problem here is that this is not a quote from Thoukydides at all. It never appears anywhere in any surviving text of Thoukydides’s Histories of the Peloponnesian War and it is never attributed to Thoukydides by any known ancient writer. It is unclear where exactly this quote originates from, but it seems to have first become widely used in around the 1940s as a characterization of how the Germans thought about the idea of total war.

Even then, the quote did not become misattributed to Thoukydides until much later than that. The earliest attribution of this quote to Thoukydides that I am currently aware of comes from a set of quotations that were painted on the walls of the refurbished West Point Museum in 1988.

From there, the misattribution of this quote to Thoukydides appears to have spread. The quote was already widely misattributed to Thoukydides on the internet before it was used in the film Wonder Woman, indicating that the writers for the film probably found the quote somewhere online and never bothered to check to make sure it was really authentic.

ABOVE: Shot from the 2017 film Wonder Woman of Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot) conversing with the German general Erich Ludendorff (played by Danny Huston)

Socrates, son of Sophroniskos

Background

Socrates (lived c. 470 – 399 BC) was an ancient Athenian philosopher known for questioning people in the streets and encouraging them to think critically and question their own preconceived beliefs. He is considered one of the founders of western philosophy and, although most people in Athens while he was alive seem to have generally regarded him as annoying and disrespectful, today he is almost universally revered for his great wisdom. Consequently, there is an absurd number of quotes that are misattributed to him.

“The secret of change…”

Occasionally, quotes misattributed to Socrates have even managed to make the headlines. In October 2018, Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the current president of the United States of America, tweeted this quote, attributing it to Socrates:

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Here is an image of the actual tweet before she edited it in response to criticism:

This is actually a quote from a character nicknamed “Socrates” in the fictional novel The Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman, which was originally published in 1980 and later adapted into a drama film titled Peaceful Warrior, which was released in 2006. The character in the novel who speaks this line is an old man who works as a attendant at an all-night gas station. He becomes the protagonist’s spiritual mentor, leading the protagonist to nickname him “Socrates.” Here is the passage from the novel in which the quote appears:

“Back in the office, Socrates drew some water from the spring water dispenser and put on the evening’s tea specialty, rose hips, as he continued. ‘You have many habits that weaken you. The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.'”

Although Ivanka Trump was rightly called out by the media for tweeting the misattributed quote, this quote had already been circulating on the internet attributed to “Socrates” long before Ivanka Trump tweeted about it and it is still circulating on the internet with the misattribution to Socrates to this day.

ABOVE: Front cover of the 2006 paperback edition of the fictional novel Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives, from which Ivanka Trump’s quote that she originally misattributed to “Socrates” really comes from

“Beware the barrenness…”

The misattributed quotes that make the headlines, however, are just the beginning of it all when it comes to quotes wrongly attributed to Socrates. Here is another quote that is often erroneously attributed to Socrates:

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

Socrates never said this. This quote is never attributed to Socrates in any ancient sources. In fact, this quote actually comes from a source about as far from Socrates as you can possibly get; it originated in the United States in the late nineteenth century as an aphorism among evangelical Protestants. The earliest known usage of this phrase comes from The Church Missionary Review, volume 53, page 811, dated to 1902. Here is the full passage:

“Let me give you two words of warning from my own experience. The one is—Beware of the barrenness of a busy life! And the other is—Beware of the words which break the bond of fellowship with those with whom you work! Beware of the barrenness of a busy life! Beware of the words which break the bond of fellowship with those with whom you work!”

This phrase became more popular over the course of the early twentieth century. It appears all over the place in American evangelical religious tracts from the 1950s up through the 1980s.

It is unclear exactly how the phrase became misattributed to Socrates, but my guess is that, at some point, someone could not think of who said it (because it was a commonly used aphorism and no one knows who originally said it) and so they thought, “Well, you know what, I bet Socrates said it because he was really wise and that sounds like a really wise quote.” And from then on, Socrates’s name became attached to the quote. In other words, this quote is not only not from Socrates; like so many quotes attributed to ancient Greek people on the internet, it is not even ancient, not even Greek, and not even pagan.

ABOVE: First-century AD Roman marble portrait head of Socrates, probably a copy of an earlier fourth-century BC Greek bronze original made by the sculptor Lysippos

“The children now love luxury…”

Another quote you often see misattributed to Socrates is this one, which is often quoted as evidence that old people have been complaining about young people for millennia:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

It is indisputably true that old people have indeed been complaining about young people since the time of Socrates. Indeed, they have been complaining since long before Socrates was even born. There are plenty of very real quotes from various ancient Greek writers complaining about the habits of the “kids these days,” but, unfortunately for the people citing this particular quote as evidence, Socrates never said this. In fact, Socrates—far from being one of the people sitting around complaining all the time about the youths being corrupt—was actually convicted and sentenced to death for supposedly having been the one who corrupted them.

You sometimes see this exact same quote misattributed to the eighth-century BC Greek hexameter poet Hesiodos of Askre. Unfortunately for the people who think Hesiodos said this, Hesiodos never said this either. (There actually is a very well-known, real passage in Hesiodos’s poem Works and Days about the degeneracy of younger generations, but this quote is not it.)

This quote is not really a direct quotation from any ancient writer at all, but rather a loose paraphrase of a passage in the book Schools of Hellas, a doctoral dissertation written by a student at Cambridge University named Kenneth John Freeman first published in 1907. Freeman did not present the passage as the exact words of any specific ancient writer, but rather as his own summary of the general attitude towards young people held by many people who lived in Athens at the time when Socrates was alive. Here is the original passage from Freeman’s thesis upon which the now-famous quote is based:

“The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise… Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters.”

The passage was first misattributed to Socrates in an article published on 24 May 1922 by the Oakland Tribune.

ABOVE: Roman marble portrait herm of Socrates probably based on a now-lost fourth-century BC Greek original

“By all means, marry…”

Here is a quote that is often attributed to Socrates on the internet:

“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.”

In truth, Socrates never said this. These exact words are never attributed to Socrates in any classical source whatsoever. The earliest source I know of in which a variant of this quote is attributed to Socrates is the book Why Are You Single? written in 1949 by Hilda Holland, which states, on page forty-nine:

“When asked by a young man whether to marry, Socrates is said to have replied: ‘By all means, marry. If you will get for yourself a good wife, you will be happy forever after; and if by chance you will get a common scold like my Xanthippe—why then you will become a philosopher.’”

This anecdote is apocryphal and Socrates never said this. Nonetheless, in Xenophon’s Symposion, Socrates is portrayed as saying some words to a somewhat similar effect. In the dialogue, Antisthenes, one of the other speakers, asks Socrates why he married his wife Xanthippe, whom he describes as “a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be.” Socrates replies:

“Ὅτι, ἔφη, ὁρῶ καὶ τοὺς ἱππικοὺς βουλομένους γενέσθαι οὐ τοὺς εὐπειθεστάτους ἀλλὰ τοὺς θυμοειδεῖς ἵππους κτωμένους. νομίζουσι γάρ, ἢν τοὺς τοιούτους δύνωνται κατέχειν, ῥᾳδίως τοῖς γε ἄλλοις ἵπποις χρήσεσθαι. κἀγὼ δὴ βουλόμενος ἀνθρώποις χρῆσθαι καὶ ὁμιλεῖν ταύτην κέκτημαι, εὖ εἰδὼς ὅτι εἰ ταύτην ὑποίσω, ῥᾳδίως τοῖς γε ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις συνέσομαι.”

Here is the translation of this quote given by E. C. Marchant and O. J. Todd in their translation of Xenophon’s Symposion for the Loeb Classical Library:

“‘Because,’ he replied, ‘I observe that people wishing to become expert horsemen do not acquire the most docile horses but rather those that are high-spirited, believing that if they can manage this kind, they will easily handle any other. My course is similar. Humankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of humankind.’”

This is a fairly sexist attitude, but pretty much all men in ancient Greece were hopelessly sexist, so I suppose it is nothing unexpected. I should also note that this quote marks the beginning of the long history of the vilification of Socrates’s wife Xanthippe as an irredeemable shrew, a topic which I addressed in this article I published back in July 2017.

ABOVE: Engraving by Otho Vaenius from the Emblemata Horatiana, dating to 1607, depicting Socrates’s wife Xanthippe dumping a chamberpot over her husband’s head—a legendary incident that has been portrayed by numerous artists

“Know yourself.“

The ancient Greek maxim “γνῶθι σεαυτόν” (gnôthi seautón), meaning “Know yourself,” is often misattributed to Socrates. This is not without reason. As I mentioned in my “Misunderstood Ancient Quotes” article from last year, in Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is portrayed as discussing the maxim and its meaning on six different occasions and Xenophon describes Socrates in his Memorabilia as using the maxim frequently. In other words, Socrates certainly did use the maxim.

The problem is that, while Socrates certainly used the maxim, he did not come up with it. When Socrates said “Know yourself,” he was merely quoting a well-known phrase. The maxim “Know yourself” is actually far older than Socrates. It is one of the Delphic maxims, which were the 147 aphorisms inscribed at the Temple of Apollon at Delphoi. We do not know exactly who came up with the phrase, but it certainly was not Socrates.

Also, the phrase “Know yourself” is often misunderstood. I addressed this previously in my “Misunderstood Ancient Quotes” article, but I will address it briefly again here. Lots of people seem to have the impression that “knowing yourself” is about unlocking your true potential, discovering hidden secrets about yourself, revealing hidden abilities you did not know you had, and all kinds of New Age stuff.

In actuality, the maxim as it is used in ancient sources usually refers to “knowing yourself” in the sense of knowing your place—knowing that you are mortal and not a god, knowing that you are fallible, and knowing that, one day, you are going to die. It has essentially close to the same meaning as one of the other Delphic maxims: “φρόνει θνητά,” which means “Remember you are mortal.”

ABOVE: Photograph of a Roman mosaic from the San Gregorio Magno al Celio depicting a reclining skeleton with the motto “γνῶθι σεαυτόν” written beneath. The phrase γνῶθι σεαυτόν was commonly used as a momento mori in antiquity.

Aristophanes, son of Philippos

Background

Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was an ancient Athenian comic playwright who is known for his biting political satire. He is considered the master of the ancient Greek genre of Old Comedy and is the only writer of Old Comedy for whom any plays have survived to the present day complete.

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown…”

Naturally, clever and humorous quotes conveying timeless wisdom tend to get misattributed to Aristophanes. For instance, here is a quote you often see misattributed to Aristophanes on the internet:

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

Aristophanes might have agreed with the general sentiment behind this quotation, but he certainly never said it. This quote never appears in any of Aristophanes’s surviving plays or fragments; in fact, this quote never appears in any ancient sources at all. As far as anyone can tell, this quote was made up out of whole cloth for the 2002 drama film The Emperor’s Club, directed by Michael Hoffman. It is attributed in the movie to Aristophanes, but there is no record of this quote at all prior to the film’s release.

ABOVE: Ancient Greek herma of Aristophanes. The portrayal shown here is probably imaginative, since Aristophanes himself jests in his plays about his own premature baldness; whereas this bust clearly shows him with hair.

“Times change…”

You may have also seen this quote attributed to Aristophanes:

“Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.”

This line appears at the end of line 914 of William Arrowsmith’s 1962 translation of Aristophanes’s comedy The Clouds. The line does not appear in any other translation or in the Greek text, but only in Arrowsmith’s translation.

Aristotle of Stageira

Background

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle of Stageira (lived 384 – 322 BC) is widely renowned as one of the greatest ancient Greek philosophers. He was a student of Plato, but he disagreed with many aspects of Plato’s philosophy. He was highly learned and wrote on a wide range of subjects, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, government, literature, linguistics, astronomy, biology, geology, physics, and psychology. Although Aristotle was not himself an empiricist, his ideas were highly influential in the development of western empiricism and the scientific method. Naturally, a lot of wise-sounding quotes have been misattributed to him over the years.

“We are what we repeatedly do…”

You have almost certainly seen this quote attributed to Aristotle at some point. It is all over the internet and commonly appears in collections of wise and thoughtful sayings:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

This statement is a pithy summary of Aristotle’s view on the nature of excellence, but Aristotle himself never said this. This is, in fact, a modern summary of Aristotle’s view from Chapter II, Section VII: “Ethics and the Nature of Happiness” from the book The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers, which was written by the American author and historian Will Durant (lived 1885 – 1981) and was first published in 1926.

At some point, someone apparently mistook Will Durant’s summary of Aristotle’s view as a direct quote from Aristotle himself. The reason why this line was mistaken for a direct quote by Aristotle is probably partly because it sounds like something Aristotle might have said and partly because, in Will Durant’s book, it appears between two actual quotes from Aristotle. Here is the full passage in which this quote appears in Durant’s book:

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; ‘these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions’; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: ‘the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life… for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.'”

If you really like this quote, you can still quote it, just make sure to say that it is a summary of Aristotle’s philosophy by Will Durant, not an actual direct quote from Aristotle himself.

ABOVE: Roman marble copy of a late fourth-century BC Greek bust of Aristotle by the sculptor Lysippos

Alexander the Great

Background

King Alexandros III of Makedonia (lived 356 – 323 BC), the man most commonly known today in English as “Alexander the Great,” is renowned to this day as one of the greatest military commanders of all time. He is known for having conquered the entire Achaemenid Persian Empire. His empire that he built crumbled soon after his death, but, while it existed, it was possibly the largest empire the ancient world had seen up until that point. He accomplished all this before his death in June 323 BC at the age of only thirty-two. On account of his fame and military genius, there are many quotes that have become misattributed to him.

“There are no more worlds…”

The idea that Alexander the Great lamented that “There are no more worlds left to conquer!” is an old one. Most people today are familiar with it from a reference to it made by the villain Hans Gruber, played by the actor Alan Rickman, in the 1988 American action thriller film Die Hard. In the film, Gruber declares:

“‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’ Benefits of a classical education.”

Although this exact quote was invented for the movie and is not found in any sources prior to the film’s release, the actual idea behind this quote goes back to at least 1842, since a review of the book The Apocryphal Napoleon by Louis Geoffroy published in that year states:

“Alexander wept for other worlds to conquer, the books tell us, because, forsooth, he had marched with an army in one direction through countries whose utmost extent was about two-thirds that of the United States.”

It is possible that the misattributed quote may go all the way back to the French Protestant reformer John Calvin (lived 1509 – 1564), who wrote something similar to this as part of his interpretation of Psalm 146 in the fifth volume of his Commentary on Psalms. Here is the passage from John Calvin, as translated into English from the original French by Reverend James Anderson:

“When he says that in that day all his thoughts perish, or flow away, perhaps under this expression he censures the madness of princes in setting no bounds to their hopes and desires, and scaling the very heavens in their ambition, like the insane Alexander of Macedon, who, upon hearing that there were other worlds, wept that he had not yet conquered one, although soon after the funeral urn sufficed him.”

John Calvin (or whoever John Calvin might have been using as a source when he wrote this), in turn, seems to have been half-remembering an anecdote about the life of Alexander that the Greek writer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – after c. 119 AD) tells in his essay On Tranquility of the Mind, chapter 4. Here is the actual passage from Ploutarchos, as translated by W. C. Helmbold:

“Alexander wept when he heard Anaxarchus discourse about an infinite number of worlds, and when his friends inquired what ailed him, ‘Is it not worthy of tears,’ he said, ‘that, when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one?'”

In other words, according to Ploutarchos, Alexander did weep over something related to the idea of the existence of many worlds, but, according to Ploutarchos, it was not because Alexander thought there were no other worlds left to conquer, but rather for exactly the opposite reason: because Alexander was told that there are many worlds and he had not even fully conquered one of them.

ABOVE: Detail of the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun in the Roman city of Pompeii, dating to the first century AD, depicting Alexander the Great’s famous defeat of King Dareios III of the Achaemenid Empire in the Battle of Issos in November 333 BC

Epikouros of Samos

Background

Epikouros of Samos (lived 341 – 270 BC), whose name is often Latinized as Epicurus, was a Hellenistic Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of the Greek philosophical school of Epicureanism. The Epicureans believed that the gods had no involvement whatsoever in human affairs and were known for their skepticism of claims of supernatural phenomena. Naturally, many skeptical quotes have become misattributed to Epikouros.

The so-called “Epicurean trilemma”

You have almost certainly seen this quote attributed to Epikouros. It is probably the most famous phrasing of the Problem of Evil ever made:

“Is he [i.e. God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”

One thing is certain and that is that Epikouros certainly never presented the Epicurean trilemma using this wording. The trilemma was first presented using this wording by the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (lived 1711 – 1776) in his book Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which was completed in 1776 shortly before Hume’s death and published posthumously in 1779. The reason why this phrasing of the trilemma is often misattributed to Epikouros is because Hume credited the argument itself to Epikouros and people apparently misunderstood him, thinking he was directly quoting Epikouros rather than paraphrasing.

ABOVE: Portrait painted in 1754 by Allan Ramsay of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, the real author of the version of the so-called “Epicurean trilemma” that is often quoted with the misattribution to Epikouros

Hume based his description of the Problem of Evil on a description from the early Christian apologist Lactantius (lived c. 250 – c. 325 AD) in chapter thirteen, verses twenty through twenty-one of his treatise De Ira Dei (“Concerning the Wrath of God“). Lactantius writes, as translated by William Fletcher:

“But if this account is true, which the Stoics were in no manner able to see, that argument also of Epicurus is done away. God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them? I know that many of the philosophers, who defend providence, are accustomed to be disturbed by this argument, and are almost driven against their will to admit that God takes no interest in anything, which Epicurus especially aims at.”

No argument at all like this one occurs in any of the extant writings of Epikouros. This may not necessarily mean anything, because the vast majority of everything Epikouros wrote has been lost. We only have three of Epikouros’s letters (i.e. the Letter to Menoikeus, the Letter to Pythokles, and the Letter to Herodotos) and two collections of quotations from his now-lost works (i.e. the Principle Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings).

Epikouros could therefore have hypothetically presented an argument along the lines of what Lactantius describes in one of his works that are no longer extant, such as his treatise On the Gods, which the third-century AD Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtios praises as one of Epikouros’s best works, or his treatise On Nature, which is known to have spanned thirty-seven volumes, but which only survives in fragments. Nonetheless, it does raise suspicion that Lactantius does not say which treatise Epicurus is supposed to have said this in.

In any case, if Epikouros did present some form of the Epicurean trilemma, his version of the trilemma would have been used as part of an argument in favor of his view that the gods exist, but that they have no involvement whatsoever in human affairs—not an argument against the existence of deities altogether.

Epikouros was certainly not an atheist by the modern definition of the word. He believed in the existence of deities, but he believed that the gods were morally perfect beings and that they had no involvement whatsoever in human affairs. In his Letter to Menoikeus, one of the three extant letters that are the main sources for most of what we know about his teachings, Epikouros himself writes, as translated into English by Robert Drew Hicks:

“First believe that [a god] is a living being immortal and happy, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of him anything that is at agrees not with about him whatever may uphold both his happyness and his immortality. For truly there are gods, and knowledge of them is evident; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that people do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the person who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in people like to themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.”

This leaves us with two possibilities:

1. Epikouros expressed some form of the Epicurean trilemma in one of his lost works, perhaps in his now-lost treatise On the Gods, but not the version of the trilemma that is so often misattributed to him.
2. Epikouros never expressed any form of the so-called “Epicurean trilemma” at all; Lactantius just heard the trilemma somewhere and falsely assumed it originated with Epikouros because he knew the Epicureans had a reputation for skepticism.

In either case, the version of the trilemma that we know today is certainly misattributed; it comes from Hume, not Epikouros.

ABOVE: Roman marble portrait head of Epikouros, probably based on an earlier Hellenistic Greek original

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Background

Marcus Tullius Cicero (lived 106 – 43 BC) is widely recognized as the greatest statesman of the late Roman Republic. He has a reputation for having been a moderate, intellectual politician and a true Roman patriot. He was a prolific writer and public speaker and he is known for his characteristic style of oratory using long, periodic sentences (dubbed “Ciceronian”). A massive number of his writings have survived to the present day.

“A room without books…”

The following quote has been misattributed to Cicero for over a century and is misattributed to him in numerous books of quotations from the twentieth century:

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

It is truly a lovely quote embodying a bibliophilic sentiment that I am sure Cicero himself would approve of. Cicero, however, never spoke or wrote these words. This quote appears to originate from a paraphrase of a real quote from Cicero found in William Forsythe’s 1864 biography of Cicero, titled The Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. William Forsythe writes on page fifty-six of the first volume of his biography:

“His fondness for books amounted to a passion. He tells Atticus, that when his librarian Tyrannio had arranged his books it seemed as if his house had got a soul …”

The line from Cicero that Forsythe seems to be referring to here is the following line from Cicero’s Epistulae ad Atticum 4.8.2. The text in question is a letter written by Cicero to his friend Atticus in late spring of 56 BC. In it, Cicero states:

“postea vero, quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis aedibus.”

Translated into English, this means:

“And truly, since Tyrannio organised my books, a mind seems to have been added to my house.”

You may notice that Cicero actually said “a mind seems to have been added to my house,” not “a soul.” Therefore, Cicero did not say “A house without books is like a body without a soul,” but he did say something vaguely similar.

ABOVE: First-century AD Roman marble bust of Cicero from the Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy

Petronius Arbiter

Petronius Arbiter (lived c. 27 – 66 AD) was an ancient Roman writer and satirist who is most famous for his novel The Satyrica. Somewhat ironically, even the title of his novel is frequently misquoted. The novel is often referred to as “The Satyricon,” but this is incorrect, because the title is actually plural, not singular. The following quotation is often misattributed to Petronius’s Satyrica:

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

This quotation, however, does not, in fact, come from Petronius or from any other ancient writer at all, but rather from the short story “Merrill’s Merauders” by Charlton Ogburn, which was published in Harpers Magazine in January 1957. I am not sure how exactly it came to be misattributed to Petronius, but I imagine someone at some point probably thought it sounded like something Petronius would write and just went with it without bothering to check the real source of the quote.

ABOVE: Fictional illustration of Petronius Arbiter, author of the Satyrica, from the Favissae, utriusque antiquitatis tam romanae quam graecae by Henricus Spoor, dating to 1707. No one knows what Petronius really looked like.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Background

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (lived 121 – 180 AD) was a Roman emperor who ruled from 8 March 161 until 17 March 180 AD. In addition to being a Roman emperor, he was also a Stoic philosopher. He wrote a book on Stoic philosophy in Koine Greek, which he seems to have given no official title and which he probably never intended to be published. Somehow or another, however, the book was published. Today, this book is known as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and it is widely seen as one of the most important surviving works of ancient Roman Stoic philosophy.

“Live a good life…”

Since he was both a philosopher and an emperor, Marcus Aurelius has had many quotes misattributed to him over the years. Here is a quote that is common misattributed to Marcus Aurelius in memes online:

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but… will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

It is easy to understand why, to someone who does not understand ancient Roman Stoicism, this might sound like the sort of thing a wise ancient Stoic might have written. Unfortunately for those who like this quote, Marcus Aurelius never wrote this. The exact origin of this misattributed quote is uncertain, but it appears to have originated somewhere on the internet in around 2009, which makes it significantly younger than even I am.

Regardless of where this misattributed quote comes from, however, it is abundantly clear how it came about. The misattributed quote seems to be a very bad paraphrase of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations 2.11. Here is the full text of the passage in the original Koine Greek:

“Ὡς ἤδη δυνατοῦ ὄντος ἐξιέναι τοῦ βίου, οὕτως ἕκαστα ποιεῖν καὶ λέγειν καὶ διανοεῖσθαι. τὸ δὲ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀπελθεῖν, εἰ μὲν θεοὶ εἰσίν, οὐδὲν δεινόν· κακῷ γάρ σε οὐκ ἂν περιβάλοιεν· εἰ δὲ ἤτοι οὐκ εἰσίν, ἢ οὐ μέλει αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀνθρωπείων, τί μοι ζῆν ἐν κόσμῳ κενῷ θεῶν ἢ προνοίας κενῷ; ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰσί, καὶ μέλει αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀνθρωπείων· καὶ τοῖς μὲν κατ᾿ ἀλήθειαν κακοῖς ἵνα μὴ περιπίπτῃ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ τὸ πᾶν ἔθεντο· τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν εἴ τι κακὸν ἦν, καὶ τοῦτο ἂν προείδοντο, ἵνα ἐπὶ παντὶ ᾖ τὸ μὴ περιπίπτειν αὐτῷ.”

Here is the text of the same passage in English as translated by C. R. Haines for the Loeb Classical Library:

“Let thine every deed and word and thought be those of a man who can depart from life this moment, But to go away from among men, if there are Gods, is nothing dreadful; for they would not involve thee in evil. But if indeed there are no Gods, or if they do not concern themselves with the affairs of men, what boots it for me to live in a Universe empty of Gods or empty of Providence? Nay, but there are Gods, and they do concern themselves with human things; and they have put it wholly in man’s power not to fall into evils that are truly such. And had there been any evil in what lies beyond, for this too would they have made provision, that it should be in every man’s power not to fall into it.”

Marcus Aurelius says some things here that are vaguely similar to things that are said in the quote that is misattributed to him on the internet. It is clear that this is the passage that the quote off the internet is based on. The problem is that, not only are Marcus Aurelius’s words in the actual passage significantly different from the quote off the internet, but Marcus Aurelius is actually arguing for an entirely different point.

The quote off the internet is arguing that, if you live a good life, then you will experience a net positive outcome, regardless of whether or not deities exist. The real passage by Marcus Aurelius, however, accepts the assumption that deities do exist and argues that the gods provide people with the means to avoid all evils, even after death. Whoever wrote the quote on the internet clearly misunderstood what Marcus Aurelius was saying.

ABOVE: Roman marble bust of the emperor Marcus Aurelius from the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul

“The object in life is not…”

Here is another quote that is often misattributed to Marcus Aurelius:

“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

While this is certainly a clever saying, Marcus Aurelius did not say this. As far as I can work out, the earliest attribution of this phrase to Marcus Aurelius comes from the beginning of Chapter Eight of Leo Tolstoy’s 1904 book Bethink Yourselves! in which Tolstoy claims that it is from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Nothing resembling this quote actually appears in the Meditations, though. My best guess is that Tolstoy probably thought he was summarizing Marcus Aurelius. It is hard to tell what he was thinking.

Hypatia of Alexandria

Background

Hypatia of Alexandria (born c. 350 – c. 370; died 415 AD) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who lived in the city of Alexandria in Egypt during late antiquity. As a result of her brutal (but often misunderstood) murder by a mob of Christians led by a lector named Peter in March 415 AD, she has become mythologized in modern culture as a “martyr for science.” (For a debunking of modern misconceptions about Hypatia, I suggest reading this article I originally published on 6 August 2018.)

“Fables should be taught as fables…”

As a result of Hypatia’s modern reputation, it makes sense why so many quotes have been misattributed to her. Here is a quote you see attributed to Hypatia of Alexandria all the time on the internet:

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth–often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”

People like this quote because they agree with its assessment of religion and they like the idea that this was said by a woman who was famously murdered by a mob of Christians. Unfortunately for those people, this quote is totally fake. Hypatia never said anything like this.

This quote originates from a pseudo-biography of Hypatia written by the American writer Elbert Hubbard (lived 1856 – 1915) as part of his series Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers. It was published in 1908 and clearly originally intended for children. Despite purportedly being a biography, the book was almost completely fiction. Hubbard made up all kinds of fanciful stories not found in any ancient sources whatsoever and attributed a whole bunch of quotes to Hypatia and to her father Theon that, as best as anyone can tell, he simply made up himself.

“Neoplatonism is a progressive…”

You may have also seen this quote attributed to Hypatia somewhere online:

“Neoplatonism is progressive philosophy, and does not expect to state final conditions to men whose minds are finite. Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.”

Hypatia did not say this either. It is another one of Elbert Hubbard’s completely made-up quotes. This one appears at the very beginning of his book, right after the title page before the frontispiece. It is also worth noting that this quote is really describing early twentieth-century progressivism more than genuine, ancient Neoplatonism.

“Reserve your right to think…”

Here is another quote you often see attributed to Hypatia on the internet:

“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”

Once again people like this quote because it encourages a rationalistic view of the world. Unfortunately, this quote is totally fake also. In fact, this quote also comes from Hubbard’s pseudo-biography of Hypatia. The irony in this case, however, is that, in Hubbard’s book, this quote is not even attributed to Hypatia, but rather to Hypatia’s father, the mathematician Theon of Alexandria (lived c. 335 – c. 405 AD).

Of course, Theon did not say this quote either because Hubbard just made it up like all the other quotes in his book. This quote is therefore doubly misattributed because, not only did Hypatia never say anything like it, but Hypatia is not even the person to whom this fake quote was originally wrongly attributed.

“All formal dogmatic religions…”

You also frequently see this quote attributed to Hypatia on the internet:

“All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.”

If you guessed that this quote comes from Elbert Hubbard’s 1908 fictional biography of Hypatia, then, congratulations, you are correct! Just like the last quote I examined, Hubbard actually attributes this line to Theon, not to Hypatia herself.

Any quotes about religion or philosophy that you find on the internet attributed to Hypatia are fake because the surviving ancients sources about her life never directly quote her on either of these subjects and her only surviving works are all mathematical works that do not address the subjects of religion or philosophy at all.

Another irony surrounding Hubbard’s fake Hypatia quotes is that, even though all of these quotes are clearly intended as subtle criticisms of Christianity, all evidence seems to indicate that Hypatia was friendly towards Christians—or at least not openly hostile towards them. For instance, all of her known students were Christians. She was also close friend of Synesios (lived c. 373 – c. 414 AD), the Christian bishop of the city of Ptolemais, who was one of her former pupils. She also acted in an advisor’s capacity to Orestes, the Christian prefect of Egypt.

The contemporary Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos (lived c. 380 – after c. 439) states in Book Seven, Chapter Fifteen of his Ecclesiastical History that Hypatia was widely beloved and admired by Christians and pagans alike. If she was really going around saying things like “All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious,” I doubt she would have been so widely respected. It is also worth noting that the whole idea of “religion” as a specific, clearly-defined thing distinct from everyday life is an exclusively modern, western notion. To the ancient Greeks, what we call “religion” was simply part of everyday life.

ABOVE: Fictional portrait of Hypatia drawn by Jules Maurice Gaspard as an illustration for Elbert Hubbard’s 1908 fictional biography of her. No one knows what Hypatia really looked like or even how old she was at the time of her death.

Help fight misattributed ancient quotes!

The thing about quotes that are misattributed to people from ancient times who did not actually say them is that this is a problem that can be easily averted. All you have to do is exercise healthy skepticism. If you see a quote online attributed to someone from ancient times without a reference or a citation to a specific ancient source, do not trust it because it is probably misattributed.

Be especially wary of quotes in memes because, as I previously noted in this article I published in February 2019 debunking a popular meme about throwing apples at people being considered a “marriage proposal” in ancient Greece, memes are just about the most notoriously unreliable source of factual information you could possibly find. Literally anyone can write anything in a meme. I do not know how many times I am going to have to say this, but, just because something is in a meme, that does not make it true.

In the meantime, if you ever see any of the misattributed quotes addressed in this article, just add a comment or a reply saying, “Hey, that quote is misattributed! That person never really said that!” with a link to this article. We cannot completely stop misattributed ancient quotes from spreading, but we can fight them and we can slow their progress.