“Know Thyself”: Not Socrates, but the Temple at Delphi
By "Know thyself" is the most famous thing Socrates never said first.
It was an inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, already old and already famous by his time. Socrates used it, often and to great effect. But in the dialogues where he does, he is careful to say where it came from.
Socrates tells you himself
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates explains why he has no time for clever theories about myths:
I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.Plato, Phaedrus 229e–230a, trans. Benjamin Jowett
"As the Delphian inscription says." He is quoting it, and he says so.
In the Protagoras, he goes further, and names who the tradition said put it there: the Seven Sages, who
met together and dedicated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, as the first-fruits of their wisdom, the far-famed inscriptions, which are in all men’s mouths--’Know thyself,’ and ’Nothing too much.’Plato, Protagoras 343b, trans. Benjamin Jowett
"In all men’s mouths." By Socrates’s own account, everyone already knew it.
So who did say it first?
Nobody knows, and the ancient writers did not know either. Diogenes Laertius, collecting the lives of the philosophers in the third century AD, gives it to Thales of Miletus, and then in the same sentence admits the doubt:
To him belongs the proverb "Know thyself," which Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers attributes to Phemonoë, though admitting that it was appropriated by Chilon.Diogenes Laertius, Lives I.40, trans. R. D. Hicks (1925)
Phemonoë was said to be the first priestess of Apollo at Delphi. Chilon was a Spartan sage. Thales was a philosopher from Ionia. That is three claimants in a single sentence, which tells you how settled the question was even then. Elsewhere Diogenes says plainly that the sayings of the sages "are attributed now to one now to the other."
The story of the Seven Sages dedicating it at Delphi is itself a legend rather than history; the lists of who the seven were do not even agree. What is solid is the inscription, and that it predates Socrates.
Why the name moved to Socrates
Because he made it a method. Others read the inscription as a short moral command; in Plato’s Charmides, the speaker Critias says that "Know thyself!" and "Be temperate!" are the same. Socrates turned it into a lifelong project of examining what you believe and whether you have any right to believe it. His version of the idea is the one that survived, so his name attached to the words, the way a famous cover version ends up credited with the song.
That is a respectable reason for the misattribution. It is still a misattribution.
The Stoics knew it was older
The Stoics inherited the maxim and treated it the same way, as common property. Epictetus, explaining why a tyrant can chain your leg but not your will, puts it like this:
This is why the ancients taught the maxim, Know thyself.Epictetus, Discourses I.18, trans. George Long
"The ancients." Not Socrates. For Epictetus, knowing yourself meant knowing which part of you is actually yours to govern, which is the dichotomy of control by another name.
How to quote it
Call it the Delphic maxim, or "the inscription at Delphi." If you want Socrates, the line that is genuinely his, in Plato’s account of his trial, is "the unexamined life is not worth living." That one is in the Apology.
This is on our list of misattributed Stoic quotes, along with another Socrates line that a novel gave him and one that is not in Plato at all.
Sources: Plato, Phaedrus and Protagoras, trans. Benjamin Jowett, Project Gutenberg #1636 and #1591; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers I.40–41, trans. R. D. Hicks (1925), on Wikisource; Epictetus, Discourses I.18, trans. George Long, Project Gutenberg #10661.
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