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Who really said it

Necessity is the mother of invention

Not Plato — an English proverb English proverb (anonymous) Modern English form attested by 1658; Latin “Mater artium necessitas” in print by 1519
Disputed Free to reuse

The exact wording is not Plato’s. It is an old English proverb — recorded in its modern form by Richard Franck in Northern Memoirs (written 1658: “Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention”), with a Latin antecedent (“Mater artium necessitas”) printed in William Horman’s Vulgaria in 1519. The Plato credit rests on Benjamin Jowett’s florid translation of the Republic, whose literal sense is merely “our need will be the real creator.”

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Necessity is the mother of invention” an English proverb (earliest modern form: Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs, 1658; Latin “Mater artium necessitas,” 1519), commonly misattributed to Plato via Benjamin Jowett’s translation of the Republic.

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

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In context

Evoking the world of English proverb. Theme: "Necessity is the mother of invention". 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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Provenance

An English proverb, not a line from Plato

Proverb
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
Earliest modern English form
Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs, Calculated for the Meridian of Scotland (written 1658)
Latin antecedent
“Mater artium necessitas,” in William Horman’s Vulgaria (1519)
Popular (mis)attribution
Plato, Republic — via B. Jowett’s translation

Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention. the proverb vs. Plato

The earliest recorded appearance of the proverb in its modern English wording — Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs (written 1658). Plato’s Republic (Book II, 369c) voices the underlying idea — that the state and its crafts arise from human need — but the literal Jowett rendering is only “our need will be the real creator”; the “mother of invention” flourish is the translator’s, not Plato’s.

Phrases.org.uk: meaning & origin

How we verified this

  • Plato is the name most often attached to the line, but the credit is a translation artefact: Wikipedia notes that Plato’s Republic says only “our need will be the real creator,” which Jowett’s 1894 translation “rendered loosely,” while phrases.org.uk adds that such Republic translations came long after the phrase was common in English and are “more likely to be the work of the translator than being a literal version of Plato’s words.”
  • The earliest recorded modern English form is Richard Franck’s 1658 “Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” per phrases.org.uk.
  • A Latin antecedent, “Mater artium necessitas,” was printed by schoolmaster William Horman in his Vulgaria in 1519 — over a century before Franck — as documented on Wikipedia.
  • In Jowett’s translation of the Republic, the origin-of-the-state passage casts “necessity” as the real inventor — but the polished proverb is Jowett’s Victorian phrasing, not a literal line of Plato’s Greek.
Public domain

The proverb is centuries old and its earliest recorded forms — Horman’s 1519 Latin and Franck’s 1658 English — are long in the public domain, as is Jowett’s 19th-century translation of the Republic. As an anonymous proverb tied to specific pre-1931 printings, the wording is public domain in the United States.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

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

Why everyone says “Plato”

The line is routinely stamped “Plato” on quote sites and social media. He supplied the thought, but not this wording — which is an English proverb older, in Latin, than any English Plato translation.

Plato the popular misattribution

Repeated flatly as a Plato quotation (e.g. Goodreads). But the credit is a translation artefact: phrases.org.uk notes the Republic translations that carry this wording came “much later than the phrase was in common use in English” and are “more likely to be the work of the translator” than a literal version of Plato’s words.

Benjamin Jowett source of the flourish

Jowett’s translation of Republic 369c reads the origin of the state in terms of necessity; the literal sense, though, is only “our need will be the real creator.” The proverbial “mother of invention” phrasing is his, and it postdates Franck’s 1658 English use documented at phrases.org.uk.

The idea is Plato’s; the sentence is an anonymous English proverb — first in its modern form in Richard Franck’s Northern Memoirs (1658), with Latin roots printed by 1519.

Context

A thought old enough to have many parents

The notion that hardship drives ingenuity is ancient and widespread — it echoes in Aesop’s The Crow and the Pitcher and in Plato’s account of why cities form. Because the idea is everywhere, the crisp English sentence that captures it drifted toward the most prestigious available name: Plato.

But proverbs rarely have single authors, and this one is traceable in print — first in Latin (1519), then in its exact modern English shape (1658) — before any English reader met Plato in the words later chosen by Benjamin Jowett. The attribution is a case of a famous name absorbing an anonymous saying.

Plato supplied the thought; the sentence is a proverb that borrowed his name.

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Filed under

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

Necessity is the mother of inventionen.wikipedia.org

Full origin history: the Plato/Jowett attribution, Horman’s 1519 Latin, Ascham (1545), Chapman (1608), and Franck’s 1658 English form.
Meaning & origin of the phrasephrases.org.uk

Gary Martin’s survey confirming Franck (1658) as the earliest exact English use and cautioning that the Plato attribution is a translator’s artefact.
Plato, The Republic (Jowett trans.)gutenberg.org

Public-domain full text of Jowett’s translation — the source of the Plato attribution; Book II frames need/necessity as the origin of the state.
Quote by Plato (popular attribution)goodreads.com

A typical example of the internet crediting the line flatly to “Plato,” with no source cited — the misattribution this page corrects.
QI: “invention arises from idleness”quoteinvestigator.com

Quote Investigator on Agatha Christie’s counter-proverb; treats “necessity is the mother of invention” as a well-known saying, not a Plato quotation.

The name it’s pinned on

Plato, the popular creditee

Plato

c. 428–348 BC · Athenian philosopher · author of the Republic

Plato founded the Academy in Athens and wrote the dialogues that shaped Western philosophy, among them the Republic. In Book II his Socrates argues that the city — and its division of labour and crafts — arises from human need. That genuine idea is the seed behind the proverb, but the memorable English wording belongs to translators and proverb-makers, not to Plato’s Greek. The line is credited to him chiefly because Benjamin Jowett’s Victorian translation dressed the passage in proverbial language.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs (1658)

Earliest recorded modern English form in Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs, Calculated for the Meridian of Scotland (written 1658; London, 1694). Latin antecedent “Mater artium necessitas” in William Horman, Vulgaria (London, 1519). Cf. Plato, Republic, Book II, 369c, trans. Benjamin Jowett.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention/

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