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Who really said it

The unexamined life is not worth living

Spoken by Socrates c. 470–399 BC · Athenian philosopher, as recorded by Plato
Verified Free to reuse

The line is from Socrates’ defense speech at his trial in 399 BC, preserved in Plato’s Apology at section 38a. It is one of the best-documented quotations in the Western canon — with the important caveat that Socrates wrote nothing himself, so we have it only through his pupil Plato’s account.

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

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“The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates, in Plato’s Apology (38a), 399 BC

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Provenance

Plato, Apology 38a

Work
Apology (Apologia Sokratous)
Author
Plato, recording Socrates
Location
Section 38a5–6
Setting
Socrates’ trial, Athens, 399 BC

…if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less. ↑ the popular one-liner drops the argument it belongs to

Grube’s translation of Apology 38a. The Greek is ο δε ανεξέταστος βίος ου βιωτὸς ανθρώπῳ (ho de anexetastos bios ou biotos anthropoi) — literally “the unexamined life is not liveable for a man.”

Plato, Apology 38a on Perseus (English translation)

How we verified this

Public domain

The underlying text is ancient and long out of copyright; individual modern English translations (e.g. Grube’s) may themselves be under copyright, but the quote and its classical source are public domain.

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

Correctly Socrates — but watch the fine print

This is a rare case where the popular attribution is right. The confusions are subtler than a wrong name:

Plato understandable

Because the line only exists in Plato’s Apology ↗, it is often filed under Plato. Within the text, though, the words are spoken by Socrates in his own defense — Plato is the author-narrator, not the speaker.

stripped of its meaning

Self-help and motivational culture rebrand the line as a call to “find yourself.” As The Collector notes ↗, Socrates meant rigorous public philosophical inquiry into virtue, not private introspection or career planning.

Bottom line: genuinely Socrates, spoken at his trial and recorded in Plato’s Apology 38a ↗ — just remember it reaches us only through Plato’s pen.

Context

Why he said it

Socrates spoke these words near the end of his trial in 399 BC, after the jury had found him guilty. Offered the chance to propose exile or to simply stop philosophizing as an alternative to death, he refused: to give up the daily examination of virtue, he argued, would empty life of its worth.

The famous clause is the culmination of that refusal — a defense of the philosophical life so uncompromising that he preferred execution to abandoning it.

The unexamined life is not worth living for men.

The Socratic problem

Because Socrates left no writings, historians distinguish the “historical Socrates” from the character who appears in Plato’s dialogues. Whether the man actually uttered this exact sentence at his trial, or whether Plato crafted it as the perfect distillation of his teacher’s creed, cannot be settled — a limitation scholars call the “Socratic problem.”

What is certain is that the line is Plato’s record of Socrates, composed within a generation of the trial, and has been read as Socrates’ own for nearly 2,400 years.

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Filed under

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

Wisdom Purpose

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.

Apology 38a on Perseus (English)perseus.tufts.edu

Fowler’s English translation of the Apology on Perseus (the Greek text is a separate Perseus edition).
The unexamined life is not worth livingen.wikipedia.org

Dedicated encyclopedia article giving the Greek, transliteration and section reference 38a5–6.
Apology (Plato) — quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Compares the Grube, Jowett and Tredennick/Tarrant translations of the sentence.
Plato’s most famous quote, explainedthecollector.com

Essay on how the line is routinely decontextualized in modern pop culture.
The Apology of Socrateschs.harvard.edu

Full scholarly translation of the dialogue from Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies.

The author

About Socrates

Socrates

c. 470–399 BC · Athenian philosopher

Socrates was a classical Athenian philosopher widely regarded as a founder of Western moral philosophy. Famous for the “Socratic method” of relentless questioning, he wrote nothing himself — almost everything we know of him comes through his pupils Plato and Xenophon. Tried on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, he was sentenced to death and executed by hemlock in 399 BC.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Plato. Apology, 38a. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

MLA (9th ed.)

Plato. “Apology.” Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, translated by G. M. A. Grube, Hackett, 1997, 38a.

APA (7th ed.)

Plato. (1997). Apology (G. M. A. Grube, Trans.). In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Plato: Complete works. Hackett. (Original work composed c. 399 BCE)

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