The thought is genuinely Socratic, but the wording is not his. The line “I know that I know nothing” occurs nowhere in Plato’s works in precisely that form. It is a compressed paraphrase of Apology 21d, where Jowett’s translation reads “I neither know nor think that I know” — a claim about not overestimating his knowledge, not a boast of certain ignorance.
“I know that I know nothing” Socrates, in Plato, Apology 21d (trans. Benjamin Jowett). The popular wording "I know that I know nothing" appears nowhere in Plato; it is a later paraphrase. Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Socrates. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Socrates — Athenian philosopher. Theme: "I know that I know nothing". 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 "I know that I know nothing". 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
The nearest real text
Work
Plato, Apology (Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους), c. 399–385 BC
Passage
21d — Socrates recounts examining a politician reputed to be wise
Translation
Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg ebook no. 1656)
Popular wording
Not present — a later paraphrase
Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
Apology 21d, trans. Jowett
This is the passage the slogan is squeezed out of. Note what Socrates actually claims: not that he knows he knows nothing, but that he does not imagine he knows what he does not. The difference is the whole point — and it is exactly what the popular version destroys.
Plato, Apology 21d (4th c. BC). The genuine sentence. Jowett’s translation reads “I neither know nor think that I know”; Harold North Fowler’s renders the same passage “I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either” (Perseus Digital Library ↗). Neither is the slogan.
Cicero, Academica, Book I, section 16 (45 BC). The Latin route. Cicero writes that Socrates “nihil se scire dicat nisi id ipsum … ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat” — but the neat tag “scio me nihil scire” does not appear in the Latin text itself (The Latin Library ↗). Even the Latin famously attached to this quote is a summary of Cicero, not a line from him.
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers II.32 (3rd c. AD). R. D. Hicks’ translation reports that Socrates “knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance” — a doxographer’s summary written some six centuries after Socrates died (Wikisource ↗).
The modern verdict. Wikiquote lists this phrasing under Misattributed, deferring to Wikipedia’s dedicated article, which states the saying “actually occurs nowhere in Plato’s works in precisely the form” quoted (Wikipedia ↗).
✓Public domain
The excerpt shown is Benjamin Jowett’s 19th-century English translation of the Apology — Jowett died in 1893, and the text is distributed as public domain by Project Gutenberg ↗, so both the Greek original and this rendering are free of copyright in the United States. Note that other translations of the same passage are not: a modern rendering of an ancient text carries its own fresh copyright, so quoting Apology 21d from a recent edition is a different rights question entirely. The popular slogan itself has no identifiable author to hold a claim in it.
Fact-check
How a hedge became a slogan
This is not a fabrication invented from nothing — it is something subtler and more common: a real philosophical position, flattened by centuries of translation and re-translation into a sentence its subject never uttered. Four things go wrong at once.
✕
The English lineAttributed to Socrates via Plato Not in the text
Wikipedia’s dedicated article is blunt: the saying, “though widely attributed to Plato’s Socrates in both ancient and modern times, actually occurs nowhere in Plato’s works in precisely the form” quoted. Wikiquote accordingly files it under Misattributed (Wikiquote, Socrates ↗).
✕
The Latin “scio me nihil scire”Credited to Cicero Compressed
Cicero’s Academica I.16 does describe Socrates as one who “ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat” — but reading the Latin text itself, the crisp motto “scio me nihil scire” is nowhere in it (The Latin Library ↗). The tag is a summary of Cicero that later acquired his authority.
✕
The Greek “ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα”Presented as the original Back-translated
The Greek version people cite as the authentic source runs the wrong way down the chain. Wikipedia records that it “was later back-translated to Katharevousa Greek” — i.e. it is a modern Greek rendering of the Latin, not the ancient Greek of Plato (Wikipedia ↗).
✕
The philosophy“Socrates knew nothing” Overstated
The slogan makes Socrates a total sceptic. He was not. Evidence that he does not claim to know nothing sits a few pages later at Apology 29b–c, “where he claims twice to know something” — and at 29d he is confident enough in that knowledge to die for it (Wikipedia ↗).
✓What Socrates actually said, as far as any text records it, is a careful double negative: “I neither know nor think that I know” (Apology 21d, trans. Jowett ↗). He is not claiming knowledge of his own ignorance — he is declining to claim anything at all. The popular version hands him back exactly the certainty he spent his life refusing.
Context
Why the difference matters
Socrates wrote nothing. Every sentence we have from him is already someone else’s report, and usually a translation of one — which makes him uniquely vulnerable to this kind of drift. Here the drift ran Greek → Latin (Cicero’s paraphrase) → a tidy Latin motto nobody actually wrote → English → and then back into modern Greek, where it now poses as the original. Each step lost a qualification.
The qualification was the point. In the Apology, Socrates is explaining why the Delphic oracle called him the wisest man: not because he possesses some special knowledge of his own ignorance, but because, unlike the men he cross-examined, he does not pretend. His wisdom is negative — an absence of false confidence, not a possession. “I know that I know nothing” converts that absence into a trophy, which is precisely the move he was mocking.
He is not claiming to know his own ignorance. He is declining to claim anything at all.
The paradox the slogan invents
Read literally, “I know that I know nothing” is self-refuting: if you know that, you know something. Generations of readers have treated this as a deep Socratic paradox — and it is discussed as such all over the internet. But the paradox is an artefact of the translation chain, not of Socrates. His actual formulation at 21d has no such problem, because he never asserts knowledge of his ignorance in the first place; he simply reports that he does not think he knows what he does not know.
This is the tell of a paraphrase that has travelled too far: it generates a philosophical puzzle that vanishes the moment you open the primary text.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Socrates left no writings of his own. Everything credited to him reaches us through other people — chiefly Plato and Xenophon, later Diogenes Laërtius, and in Latin, Cicero. That is precisely why quotations “by Socrates” are so slippery: every one of them is already a report, and often a translation of a report. His actual position in the Apology is subtler than the slogan — he claims to be wiser than others only in that he does not imagine he knows what he does not know.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Nearest documented source
Plato. Apology 21d. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Project Gutenberg ebook no. 1656. (“I neither know nor think that I know.”) Cf. Cicero, Academica, Book I, section 16 (“ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat”), and Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers II.32, trans. R. D. Hicks. The popular English wording “I know that I know nothing” appears in none of these and has no identified author.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I know that I know nothing’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-know-that-i-know-nothing