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Who really said it

It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it

Not Aristotle — and no verified author No verified author Absent from Aristotle · earliest in print 1959 (Lowell L. Bennion, who credited Aristotle)
Disputed In copyright

Aristotle never wrote this; the sentence appears nowhere in his works. Its earliest documented print appearance is in the Latter-day Saint educator Lowell L. Bennion’s ‘Religion and the Pursuit of Truth’ (1959, p. 52), where Bennion set it in quotation marks and credited it to Aristotle — but it matches nothing in Aristotle’s texts, so whoever coined the wording, it is not authentic Aristotle.

Last verified 7 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it” is routinely attributed to Aristotle, but he never wrote it. The line appears nowhere in his works; its earliest known print source is Lowell L. Bennion's "Religion and the Pursuit of Truth" (1959), p. 52, where he set it in quotation marks and credited it to Aristotle. Aristotle's genuine "mark of an educated man" line (Nicomachean Ethics I.3) is about matching precision to the subject.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Lowell L. Bennion / publisher of Religion and the Pursuit of Truth). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Lowell L. Bennion — educator & sociologist. Theme: "It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it". 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.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it". 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 paper trail

Popularly credited to
Aristotle — not found in his works
Earliest in print
Lowell L. Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (1959), p. 52
What Aristotle really wrote
Nicomachean Ethics I.3 (1094b)

It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. ↑ Aristotle’s genuine line — the popular version keeps only the first eight words and swaps in ‘entertain a thought without accepting it’

The circulating ‘quote’ is a 20th-century paraphrase, not a translation. Aristotle’s real sentence, above, is about matching rigor to the subject at hand.

Book scan
Read the 1959 book on the Internet Archive
Classicist’s rebuttal at Sententiae Antiquae

How we know

In copyright

The genuine Aristotle passage is public domain, but the popular paraphrase originates in a 1959 book and is not treated here as public domain. Attribute it honestly — not to Aristotle.

Fact-check

The misattribution

This is one of the internet’s most durable pseudo-Aristotle quotations. It has never been located in his writings.

Aristotle

Classicist Joel Christensen demonstrates the sentence is absent from Aristotle’s corpus ↗; the genuine ‘mark of an educated man’ line in Nicomachean Ethics I.3 is about precision, not entertaining ideas.

The wording first appears in Lowell L. Bennion’s 1959 book Religion and the Pursuit of Truth, p. 52 ↗ — where he credited it to Aristotle, though it matches nothing in his works.

Context

Why the mix-up sticks

The counterfeit survives because it borrows Aristotle’s exact opening — “It is the mark of an educated…” — and then swaps in a wholly modern idea. Aristotle’s real sentence in the Nicomachean Ethics praises the educated person for demanding only as much precision as a subject allows; the popular version reassigns that same authority to open-minded skepticism, a distinctly 20th-century intellectual virtue.

Because the fake reads like something Aristotle should have said — and shares his cadence — it has become one of the most-shared ‘Aristotle’ lines online, printed on mugs, syllabi and LinkedIn posts, none of which can point to a passage.

The forgery keeps Aristotle’s first eight words and quietly replaces the rest.

The genuine passage, in full

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.3 (1094b, W. D. Ross translation): “It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

The subject there is method and expected rigor, not the psychological feat of holding an idea at arm’s length. The two sentences share a phrase and nothing else.

Explore

Filed under

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

Wisdom Doubt Knowledge

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.

Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say Thatsententiaeantiquae.com

Classicist Joel Christensen shows the line is absent from Aristotle’s corpus and gives the genuine Ethics passage.
Famous Misquotations: It Is the Mark of an Educated Mindatkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com

Traces the earliest print appearance to Bennion (1959, p. 52) and prints Aristotle’s real sentence.
Nicomachean Ethics, Book I (Ross translation)classics.mit.edu

The genuine Aristotle passage about precision — the sentence the misquote imitates.
Lowell L. Bennionen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the educator whose 1959 book is the earliest source of the phrasing.
Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (1959) — full scanarchive.org

Borrowable scan (Internet Archive controlled lending) of Bennion’s book, the earliest documented appearance of the line.

Earliest in print

About the real source

Lowell L. Bennion

1908–1996 · educator & sociologist

Lowell Lindsay Bennion (1908–1996) was an American educator, sociologist and humanitarian who earned a doctorate in sociology at the University of Strasbourg and founded the Institute of Religion beside the University of Utah in 1934. His 1959 book Religion and the Pursuit of Truth — a rare Latter-day Saint work on epistemology — is the earliest known source of this famous line — but Bennion printed it in quotation marks and credited it to Aristotle, so whether he coined it or borrowed it is unknown. Either way, it matches nothing in Aristotle’s texts.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Lowell L. Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1959), 52 — earliest documented appearance of the line later widely misattributed to Aristotle.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it’?” Last verified 7 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-the-mark-of-an-educated-mind-to-entertain-a-thought

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