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Who really said it

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something

Not Plato — an anonymous English maxim Unknown Anonymous English maxim · documented in print by 1908
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No work of Plato’s contains this line. It appears — unsigned — on page 560 of Tryon Edwards’ A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908 printing), directly above a separate entry that is credited “—Plato,” and the credit appears to have slid upward from one entry to the other. Wikiquote files it under “Disputed” ↗, noting it “cannot be found completely in any of his writings.”

Last verified 27 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something” printed unsigned in Tryon Edwards, comp., A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908 printing), p. 560. Not Plato: the line is not in his writings, and the "— Plato" credit on that page belongs to the separate sentence printed below it.

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

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of wisdom, simplicity and humility. Theme: "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something". 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 "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something". 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

Where the line is actually printed

Documented in
A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern
Compiler & printing
Compiled by Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) · 1908 printing · page 560, under the heading “TALKING”
Attribution on the page
None. The sentence is printed unsigned; the “—Plato” credit belongs to the separate entry directly beneath it
Earlier antithesis
Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric (Louisville: Morton & Griswold, 1858), p. 227

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they would like to say something.

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least wit are the greatest babblers.—Plato. Page 560 · “TALKING”

Two separate entries, set one above the other in the left-hand column of page 560. Only the second one carries a name.

Scanned page
View page 560 of the 1908 Dictionary of Thoughts
A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) at the Internet Archive

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Plato page ↗ places the saying in its Disputed section, states that it “cannot be found completely in any of his writings,” and points to A Dictionary of Thoughts (page 560) by Tryon Edwards as the source of the Plato credit.
  • In November 2008 the linguist Arnold Zwicky investigated the attribution in “Did Plato say this?” on Language Log ↗. A philosophy graduate student searched Plato’s works and found nothing similar; commenters noted that the pun turns on an English idiom (“have something to say” vs. “have to say something”) that would not work in Greek.
  • Reading the scan settles how the credit arose: on page 560 of the 1908 printing ↗ the “wise men talk” sentence is printed with no attribution at all, and the “—Plato” sits on the “empty vessels” entry immediately below it.
  • The nearest genuine antecedent is rhetorical rather than Platonic: Richard Whately’s Elements of Rhetoric (1858) ↗ advises a speaker to express himself “not, as if he wanted to say something, but as if he had something to say” (p. 227) — the same antithesis, decades before any dictionary of quotations pinned it on Plato.

The exact wording that circulates online has no identified author and no identified first publication, so no copyright status can honestly be asserted for it. The two historical texts quoted on this page are themselves long out of copyright in the United States: A Dictionary of Thoughts in its 1908 printing and Whately’s Elements of Rhetoric (1858) were both published well before 1931.

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.

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Fact-check

How this one went wrong

This is a textbook case of a credit migrating between two adjacent lines of type — and then of the borrowed line being polished on its way around the internet.

Plato Near-universal

Wikiquote lists it under “Disputed” ↗ with the note that it “cannot be found completely in any of his writings,” and Arnold Zwicky’s Language Log investigation ↗ reports that a search of Plato’s actual works turned up nothing similar.

“Wise men speak … fools because they have to say something” Sharpened later

The version printed in 1908 reads “Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they would like to say something.” The punchier modern wording — the one people quote — is not the wording on page 560 ↗.

Plato, on “empty vessels” Also doubtful

This is the entry that actually carries the “—Plato” on page 560, and it is frequently glued onto the first sentence as though the two were one quotation. Wikiquote notes ↗ that where Plato likens empty vessels to fools in the Symposium he says nothing about their sound, and suggests the popular saying is a conflation with a passage in the Laches.

On page 560 of the 1908 Dictionary of Thoughts ↗, the “wise men” sentence carries no name at all. The Plato credit belongs to the sentence printed underneath it.

Context

A quotation born in a column of type

Books of “laconic quotations” like Tryon Edwards’ A Dictionary of Thoughts set their entries as a dense stack of short paragraphs, most signed with a dash and a name, a few left unsigned. On page 560, under the heading TALKING, an unsigned aphorism about wise men and fools happens to sit directly on top of a signed one about empty vessels. Read the block as a single quotation — which is exactly what a hurried anthologist or a copy-and-paste website does — and the “—Plato” at the bottom silently annexes the sentence above.

Arnold Zwicky, writing about this quotation on Language Log in 2008, called this the world of “folk quotation”: sayings passed hand to hand through advice manuals and anthologies, far removed from any scholarly text. One of his commenters supplied the clinching argument against a Greek origin — the joke lives entirely in an English idiom. “Have something to say” and “have to say something” are the same four words reshuffled, a symmetry that no translator of Plato could have manufactured out of Greek by accident.

The pun is made of English word order. Plato had no way to write it.

Read the full story

The idea itself is not new, and it is not Plato’s either. Archbishop Richard Whately built the same antithesis into his Elements of Rhetoric, a standard nineteenth-century textbook: a writer or speaker, he advised, should seem to be expressing himself “not, as if he wanted to say something, but as if he had something to say” — advice about preaching with conviction rather than an epigram about fools. It appears on page 227 of the 1858 Morton & Griswold edition ↗.

Tryon Edwards, the compiler in whose dictionary the maxim surfaces, was an American theologian who died in 1894; the printing examined here is dated 1908. He is not the author of the line either — a dictionary of quotations gathers sayings, it does not coin them — which leaves the maxim where the evidence actually puts it: anonymous, English, and in circulation by the early twentieth century.

Explore

Filed under

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

Wisdom Simplicity Humility

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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.

Wikiquote: Plato — Disputeden.wikiquote.org

Lists the saying under Disputed, states it cannot be found completely in any of Plato's writings, and names A Dictionary of Thoughts (p. 560) as the source of the attribution.
Language Log: "Did Plato say this?"languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

Arnold Zwicky's 2 November 2008 investigation: searches of Plato's works found nothing similar, and the Whately antecedent and English-only wordplay are discussed.
A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), page 560archive.org

The scanned page itself — the maxim printed unsigned under "TALKING", directly above the separate "empty vessels" entry credited to Plato.
Whately, Elements of Rhetoric (1858)archive.org

Page 227 carries the earlier antithesis: expressing himself "not, as if he wanted to say something, but as if he had something to say."
Plato, Symposium (trans. Benjamin Jowett)www.gutenberg.org

The dialogue Wikiquote points to for Plato's actual empty-vessel comparison, in the standard public-domain Jowett translation — searchable in full.
Tryon Edwardsen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the compiler: 1809–1894, American theologian, with A Dictionary of Thoughts identified as his best-known work.

Not the author — the compiler

The man whose page the credit came from

Tryon Edwards

1809–1894 · American theologian and compiler of A Dictionary of Thoughts

Tryon Edwards was an American theologian and Congregational minister, born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1809 and died in Detroit in 1894. He served the Second Congregational Church in New London, Connecticut, but is remembered almost entirely for A Dictionary of Thoughts, the alphabetically arranged anthology of short quotations that became his best-known work. He did not write the “wise men talk” maxim and did not attribute it to anyone — his page prints it unsigned. The Plato credit belongs to the next entry down, and later readers moved it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing examined

Tryon Edwards, comp., A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908 printing), 560 — where the sentence is printed without attribution, immediately above a separate entry credited to Plato. Compare Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric (Louisville: Morton & Griswold, 1858), 227.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/wise-men-speak-because-they-have-something-to-say-fools/

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