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No findable citation to Socrates. First appears in this form in the 1990s, such as in the Douglas Bradley article "Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley", Wisconsin Ideas, UW System, 1994. It appears to be a variant on a statement from Plutarch in On Listening to Lectures: "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." Alternate translation, from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1927: "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." Often quoted as, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." Variants of the quote that are correctly attributed to Plutarch but which substitute "education" for "the mind" date back at least as far as the 1960s, as seen in the 1968 book Vision and Image by James Johnson Sweeney, p. 119. (en) |
