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Who really said it

Empathy is the highest form of knowledge

Not Plato — a modern line from Bill Bullard Bill Bullard American educator · former Dean of Faculty, San Francisco University High School
Disputed In copyright

This is a pop–psychology slogan, not Plato. It appears in none of Plato’s dialogues; Wikiquote lists it as misattributed ↗ and traces it no further than a graduation speech by educator Bill Bullard at San Francisco University High School (online by July 2007), whose fuller line runs “the highest form of knowledge… is empathy.” Bullard himself credited George Eliot — an attribution Wikiquote notes is likewise unsupported.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Empathy is the highest form of knowledge” Not Plato. Traced to educator Bill Bullard's commencement speech at San Francisco University High School (documented online in 2007); Bullard himself credited George Eliot, an attribution that is also unsupported. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Plato. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Bill Bullard). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Bill Bullard — former Dean of Faculty, San Francisco University High School. Theme: "Empathy is the highest form of knowledge". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Empathy is the highest form of knowledge". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Popularly credited to
Plato (c. 428–348 BC) — unsupported
Earliest traced to
Bill Bullard, commencement speech, San Francisco University High School
Documented by
Online by July 2007; catalogued as misattributed by Wikiquote
Bullard’s own credit
George Eliot (also unsupported)

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge; it requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.

Bill Bullard’s commencement remarks, as quoted online in 2007. The circulating “Empathy is the highest form of knowledge” is a compressed paraphrase of this passage — and neither the passage nor the slogan is Plato’s.

Wikiquote: Plato (Misattributed)

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Plato page ↗ files this under Misattributed, calling it “a very common online pop-psychological slogan” traced “no further than a graduation speech… given by Bill Bullard, who within the speech attributes it to George Eliot,” adding that “the attribution to Eliot seems likewise to be false.”
  • An early attestation is Ben Casnocha’s July 2007 blog post ↗, which quotes Bullard’s speech: “Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge… The highest form of knowledge, according to George Eliot, is empathy.”
  • The fuller passage is widely catalogued under Bullard’s name, e.g. on Goodreads ↗ — never sourced to any Platonic dialogue.
In copyright

The wording originates in Bill Bullard’s commencement speech documented online in 2007, so as a modern (post-1930) text it is in copyright to its author. There is no pre-1931 — or ancient — source for this phrasing to place in the public domain.

Fact-check

How Plato got the credit

A tidy, uplifting maxim with no home in any dialogue — exactly the kind of line that drifts onto Plato’s name online. Here the paper trail actually leads somewhere specific.

Plato Not in his works

The phrase appears in none of Plato’s dialogues; Wikiquote ↗ files it under Misattributed as “a very common online pop-psychological slogan.”

Bill Bullard Documented 2007

The line is traced to Bullard’s graduation speech at San Francisco University High School, quoted online by July 2007 ↗: “The highest form of knowledge… is empathy.”

George Eliot Unsupported

Within the speech Bullard credited the idea to George Eliot, but Wikiquote ↗ notes “the attribution to Eliot seems likewise to be false” — no such passage is known in her writing.

Best evidence: a modern line by educator Bill Bullard (documented 2007), not Plato — and the secondary credit to George Eliot is unsupported too, per Wikiquote ↗.

Context

Why it caught on

The slogan works because it flatters a modern intuition — that feeling-with others is a form of understanding — and Plato’s name lends it the gravity of antiquity. But Plato’s epistemology prized reason and the Forms; he had no concept matching the modern word “empathy,” which only entered English in the early 20th century.

Bullard’s original was a rhetorical ladder — opinion at the bottom, empathy at the top — aimed at graduating students. Stripped to five words and re-tagged “Plato,” it became a caption-ready maxim, which is how most people now meet it.

Plato had no word for “empathy” — the term is barely a century old.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Knowledge Kindness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Plato (Misattributed section)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote lists the line as misattributed and traces it to Bullard's speech; notes the George Eliot credit is also false.
Three Things to Unlearn from Schoolcasnocha.com

July 2007 blog post quoting Bullard's commencement address — an early attestation of the line.
Bill Bullard quotegoodreads.com

Community quote page attributing the fuller passage to Bill Bullard.
Misattributed to Platothecitesite.com

Quote-sourcing site listing this line among quotes wrongly credited to Plato.
George Elioten.wikiquote.org

Eliot's Wikiquote page — useful to check the secondary (also unsupported) credit Bullard gave.

The real source

Who actually said it

Bill Bullard

American educator · former Dean of Faculty, San Francisco University High School

Bill Bullard was an educator and former Dean of Faculty at San Francisco University High School. His commencement remarks — contrasting opinion as the “lowest form” of knowledge with empathy as the “highest” — circulated online from 2007 and are the earliest documented source of the saying. Bullard credited the thought to novelist George Eliot, but no such passage has been found in her work, so the phrasing is best traced to Bullard himself.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

Earliest documented in Bill Bullard, commencement address, San Francisco University High School, quoted in Ben Casnocha, “Three Things to Unlearn from School,” casnocha.com, 11 July 2007; catalogued as misattributed to Plato in Wikiquote, “Plato.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Empathy is the highest form of knowledge’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/empathy-is-the-highest-form-of-knowledge

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