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Who really said it

For the love of money is the root of all evil

Attributed to Paul the Apostle c. 5 – c. 64/65 AD · Apostle & letter-writer of the early Church
Attributed Free to reuse

These are the opening words of 1 Timothy 6:10 in the King James Version ↗, where they read exactly as quoted. (The text reproduced there is the standard modern KJV — the 1769 Oxford revision, not the 1611 printing.) The letter names Paul as its author in its first verse — but most modern scholars hold that the Pastoral Epistles were written after his death ↗. So the sentence is certain; the hand that wrote it is not.

Last verified 17 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“For the love of money is the root of all evil” 1 Timothy 6:10, King James Version (1769 Oxford text; translation first published 1611). The letter is traditionally ascribed to Paul the Apostle; most modern scholars date the Pastoral Epistles after his death. Traced by Quotle.info.

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Provenance

The verse, and who wrote the letter

Source
First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy (1 Timothy 6:10)
Translation
King James Version — 1769 Oxford text, as revised by Benjamin Blayney
Original
Koine Greek — ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία
Verdict
Wording verified verbatim — authorship of the letter contested

But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 1 Timothy 6:9-10, King James Version

The quotation is the opening clause of verse 10, not a whole sentence. In the KJV the verse runs on past a colon to say what the love of money actually does — people “coveted after” it and so “erred from the faith”. Verse 9, printed here for context, is about the wanting, not the having.

1 Timothy — King James Version, full text

How we verified this

  • The verse reads verbatim in the Wikisource transcription of the King James text ↗, at chapter 6, verse 10.
  • It reads identically in Project Gutenberg’s King James Version of the Bible ↗, under the heading ‘The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy’ — a second, independent transcription, so the wording does not rest on one editor.
  • A note on the edition, because it is easy to get wrong: the text linked above is not the 1611 printing. Wikisource’s King James Bible ↗ states in its own header that it reproduces ‘the 1769 King James Bible, as revised by Benjamin Blayney’ — the standardised text nearly every modern KJV descends from. The wording of this verse is the same; the spelling of the 1611 original is not.
  • On authorship, Wikipedia’s survey of the scholarship ↗ records that the letter names Paul at 1:1, that nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship questioned this, and that most scholars now hold the Pastorals to be by an unidentified writer of the late first to mid second century.
  • The Koine Greek behind the line — φιλαργυρία, philargyria, the love of silver — and William Tyndale’s earlier English rendering are both set out at Wikipedia’s article on the love of money ↗.
Public domain

The King James Version was first published in 1611, and the 1769 Oxford revision reproduced here is itself more than two centuries old; both are long in the public domain in the United States, and the Koine Greek they translate is ancient. This exact English wording may be reproduced freely.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The three words that go missing

The verse is quoted far more often in a shortened form, and the missing words carry the entire argument.

“Money is the root of all evil” Paraphrase

Drops the love of, and with it the subject of the sentence. The verse does not condemn money; it condemns wanting money, which is why verse 9 is about “they that will be rich” rather than they that are.

“For covetousness is the root of all evil” Translation, not the original

William Tyndale rendered the same Greek this way ↗ — naming the vice outright rather than describing it, which makes plain that ‘money’ was never the thing being blamed.

“a root of all kinds of evil” (New International Version) Translation, not the original

The same Wikipedia article ↗ notes the NIV’s wording and records that the grammarian Daniel B. Wallace lists six defensible translations of the Greek, because it is genuinely unclear whether ‘root’ is definite and whether ‘all’ means all without exclusion or all without distinction.

What the King James text actually says ↗ is “For the love of money is the root of all evil” — six words in, and the sentence has already told you the fault is in the appetite.

Context

Why ‘the love of’ is the whole sentence

Shorten the verse and you get a line against money. Leave it whole and you get a line against a particular appetite — one that, on the letter’s own account, works by pulling people away from something they already had. The coin is neutral; the coveting is not.

That is why the shortened version is so much more quotable and so much less useful. “Money is the root of all evil” is a verdict on the world. “The love of money is the root of all evil” is a verdict on the reader.

The verse does not blame the coin. It blames the wanting.

On the Greek, and the six ways to translate it

The Greek noun is philargyria (φιλαργυρία) — literally love-of-silver — and the clause reads, word for word, ‘for a root of all the evils is the love of money’.

Two ambiguities make the English genuinely hard: Greek has no indefinite article here, so ‘root’ may be a root or the root; and ‘all’ may mean all without exclusion or all without distinction. The KJV took the strong reading on both counts and the NIV the weak one, which is why the two English versions sound like different claims.

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Filed under

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

Character Wisdom Truth

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.

Wikisource — 1 Timothy (King James Version)en.wikisource.org

Primary text: the full KJV letter, carrying 6:10 verbatim.
Project Gutenberg — The King James Version of the Biblewww.gutenberg.org

A second independent public-domain transcription of the same verse.
Wikipedia — First Epistle to Timothyen.wikipedia.org

The authorship question: who the letter names, and what scholars now think.
Wikipedia — Love of moneyen.wikipedia.org

The Koine Greek, Tyndale's rendering, and the range of modern translations.
Wikipedia — Paul the Apostleen.wikipedia.org

The apostle the letter names as its author, and his place in the New Testament.
Wikisource — the King James Bible, completeen.wikisource.org

The whole KJV, for reading the letter in its canonical setting.

The author

About Paul the Apostle

Paul the Apostle

c. 5 – c. 64/65 AD · Apostle & letter-writer of the early Church

Born Saul of Tarsus in Roman Cilicia around AD 5, Paul began as a persecutor of the first Christians and became the most prolific letter-writer of the early Church, founding congregations across Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD. 1 Timothy is one of the three ‘Pastoral Epistles’ written in his name; unlike letters such as 1 Thessalonians or Romans, these are not generally accepted as his own work, and many scholars date them well after his death around AD 64–65.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

The Bible. 1 Timothy 6:10. King James Version, 1769 Oxford text as revised by Benjamin Blayney; translation first published London, 1611. The letter is ascribed to Paul in its own first verse; most modern scholars regard the Pastoral Epistles as the work of a later writer.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’?” Last verified 17 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/for-the-love-of-money-is-the-root-of-all-evil/

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