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Who really said it

The beginning is the most important part of the work

Written by Plato c. 428 – c. 348 BC · Athenian philosopher
Located in the primary text — with one word clipped in transit. Free to reuse

The line is genuinely Plato’s — Republic, Book II, at Stephanus 377a–b, where Socrates is arguing about the stories told to small children. The familiar English is Benjamin Jowett’s translation — specifically his revised third edition of 1892, not the 1871 first edition, which read “the chiefest part of any work.” Jowett’s revised sentence reads “the beginning is the most important part of any work” — the circulating one-liner has quietly dropped the “any.”

Last verified 3 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“The beginning is the most important part of the work” Plato, The Republic, Book II, 377a–b, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1871; rev. 3rd ed. 1892): "You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing." The popular one-liner drops the word "any." Verified by Quotle.info.

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Republic (Πολιτεία), Book II
Passage
Stephanus 377a–b
Translation
Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd ed. rev. (1892); first published 1871
Greek
ἀρχὴ παντὸς ἔργου μέγιστον

You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories which, though not wholly destitute of truth, are in the main fictitious; and these stories are told them when they are not of an age to learn gymnastics. … You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Republic, Book II · 377a–b

Jowett’s Victorian English renders a very compressed Greek clause — ἀρχὴ παντὸς ἔργου μέγιστον, with no verb at all. Paul Shorey’s Loeb version of the same words is “the beginning in every task is the chief thing.”

Text & commentary
Republic 377a in the Perseus Digital Library
Read Book II in Jowett's translation at Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

  • c. 375 BC — Plato composes the Republic. In Book II Socrates turns to how the city’s guardians must be raised, and argues for censorship of the poetry and stories children are told ↗.
  • At 377a–b the Greek reads Οὐκοῦν οἶσθ’ ὅτι ἀρχὴ παντὸς ἔργου μέγιστον, ἄλλως τε δὴ καὶ νέῳ καὶ ἁπαλῷ ὁτῳοῦν; — preserved in the Greek text of Book Β on Wikisource ↗.
  • 1871 — Benjamin Jowett ↗ publishes The Dialogues of Plato (Clarendon Press, four volumes). His first-edition sentence is not the famous one: it reads “the beginning is the chiefest part of any work, especially in a young and tender thing.”
  • 1892 — Jowett’s third edition, “revised and corrected throughout” (five volumes, Clarendon Press; the Republic is Vol. III), changes the line to “the beginning is the most important part of any work” — the wording that goes on to circulate, and the text reproduced in Project Gutenberg’s edition ↗.
  • Today Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its sourced Republic section at 377a, with the Jowett wording given as a variant — still with the “any” that the popular one-liner leaves out.
Public domain

Plato’s Greek has been in the public domain for two millennia, and the English quoted here is Benjamin Jowett’s translation (first published 1871, revised through his third edition of 1892) by a translator who died in 1893 — far earlier than the 1931 US threshold, and distributed by Project Gutenberg as public domain in the United States. Paul Shorey’s Loeb wording, shown only for comparison, is a separate later translation with its own rights status.

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

Right author, edited sentence

This is one of the rare famous-name quotes that survives inspection. Plato really did write it, and the source is pinnable to a single page of the Republic. What has gone missing in circulation is a word and a subject.

Quote sites and social media clipped

Jowett’s sentence reads “the beginning is the most important part of any work” — the general claim about every undertaking. The circulating one-liner drops “any,” narrowing it to “the work.” The full sentence is in Project Gutenberg’s text of the Jowett translation ↗, and Wikiquote ↗ also gives the Jowett variant with “any work.”

Productivity and business writing repurposed

Quoted as advice about starting projects. In the dialogue the sentence has a second half — “especially in the case of a young and tender thing” — and it introduces Socrates’ proposal to censor the stories told to children ↗, not a theory of good project kick-off.

Anyone quoting it as Plato’s own words Victorian English

The memorable phrasing belongs to Benjamin Jowett ↗ (1817–1893) — and, more precisely, to his revised third edition of 1892, since the 1871 first edition of the Dialogues of Plato read “the beginning is the chiefest part of any work.” Plato’s Greek is four words with no verb; other translators land somewhere quite different, as Paul Shorey’s “the beginning in every task is the chief thing” ↗ shows.

Verdict: genuine Plato, Republic 377a ↗ — quoted one word short, and about children rather than work.

Context

What the sentence is actually about

The line now travels as a productivity maxim: start well, and the rest follows. In Plato it is nothing of the kind. Socrates has just argued that the guardians of the imagined city should be trained in music (broadly, the arts) before gymnastics, because the first things a child hears are stories — fables that are, as he puts it, largely false with some truth in them.

The “beginning” he means is the beginning of a person. Because the young are soft and take an impression, whatever mould they are pressed into first is the one that sets. And the conclusion Socrates draws from it is not inspirational in any modern sense: the next thing he proposes is a censorship of the writers of fiction ↗, with mothers and nurses permitted to tell children only the approved tales.

The “beginning” Plato means is the beginning of a child, not the beginning of a project.

Why the English wording varies so much

The Greek at 377a is compressed almost to the point of shorthand — ἀρχὴ παντὸς ἔργου μέγιστον, literally something like ‘the beginning of every work ‘is’ greatest’, with no verb. Translators therefore have wide latitude, and they use it.

Jowett expanded it twice. His 1871 first edition gives “the beginning is the chiefest part of any work”; his third edition of 1892, revised throughout, settles on “the beginning is the most important part of any work” — the version everyone now quotes. Paul Shorey’s Loeb version, reproduced on Perseus ↗, gives “the beginning in every task is the chief thing.” Both are broader than the quotable form: they are claims about every undertaking, not about one particular job of work.

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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.

The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg eBook #1497. Search Book II for “the beginning is the most important part of any work” — the sentence is there in full, with the young-and-tender-thing clause.
Republic 377a on Perseus (Shorey translation)perseus.tufts.edu

Paul Shorey’s Loeb rendering of the same passage — “the beginning in every task is the chief thing” — with his footnotes to the Laws.
Plato — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in the sourced Republic section at 377a, and gives the Jowett wording (“any work”) as a variant.
Πολιτεία, Book Β — Greek textel.wikisource.org

The Greek at 377a–b: ἀρχὴ παντὸς ἔργου μέγιστον, ἄλλως τε δὴ καὶ νέῳ καὶ ἁπαλῷ ὁτῳοῦν.
Republic (Plato) — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Dates the dialogue to around 375 BC and summarises the Book II argument that guardians need an education involving censorship of poetry and stories.
Benjamin Jowett — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

The translator: 1817–1893, Regius Professor of Greek and Master of Balliol; his Dialogues of Plato appeared in 1871.

The author

About Plato

Plato

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

Plato was an Athenian philosopher whose dialogues put his teacher Socrates at the centre of arguments about justice, knowledge and the good life. The Republic, composed around 375 BC, builds an imaginary city in order to ask whether the just person is happier than the unjust — and spends much of Books II and III on how that city’s guardians should be brought up. Almost every English “Plato quote” in circulation is really a translator’s sentence; the one here is Benjamin Jowett’s.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Plato, The Republic, Book II, 377a–b, in The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 3rd ed. rev. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892); text consulted in Project Gutenberg eBook #1497.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The beginning is the most important part of the work’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-beginning-is-the-most-important-part-of-the-work/

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