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Who really said it

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder

Spoken by Socrates, as written by Plato c. 470–399 BC · Athenian philosopher · speaking in Plato’s Theaetetus
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Genuine, and traceable to the page. Socrates says it at Theaetetus 155d, and this exact English is Benjamin Jowett’s, from The Dialogues of Plato, vol. III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), p. 377 — confirmed against the scanned volume ↗. Two honest footnotes: Socrates wrote nothing, so the line is Plato’s composition put in his mouth; and the quotable phrasing is the translator’s, since the 1921 Loeb version renders the same clause “wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.”

Last verified 29 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder” Socrates, in Plato's Theaetetus 155d — "Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." Translated by Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), p. 377. Note: Plato composed the line; the memorable phrasing is Jowett's — the 1921 Loeb translation reads "wonder is the only beginning of philosophy." Verified via quotle.info. Verbatim: “I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

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In context

Evoking the world of Socrates — Athenian philosopher · wrote nothing himself — known through Plato and Xenophon. Theme: "Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder". 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

The source

Work
Plato, Theaetetus 155d
Speaker
Socrates, replying to the young mathematician Theaetetus
Translation
Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, in four volumes, vol. III (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1871), p. 377
Greek original
Early-middle 4th century BC

Theaet. Yes, Socrates, and I am amazed when I think of them; indeed I am; and I want to know what is the meaning of them, and there are times when my head quite swims with the contemplation of them.

Soc. I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder; he was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris the messenger of heaven is the child of Thaumas (wonder). Theaetetus 155d

Transcribed from the 1871 first edition — vol. III, p. 377, the page whose running head reads “THEAETETUS. 377.” The Project Gutenberg text of Theaetetus ↗, also credited to Jowett, carries the identical sentence but punctuates the sequel differently: “… and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder).” The famous clause itself is unchanged.

Scanned first edition
The Dialogues of Plato, vol. III (Clarendon Press, 1871)
Read Theaetetus in Jowett's translation (Project Gutenberg)

How we verified it

  • Wikiquote’s sourced Plato page ↗ lists the line in its Theaetetus section with a hard citation: 155d, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377. We treated that as the anchor and went to check it.
  • We pulled the volume itself. Internet Archive item cu31924092280068 ↗ is catalogued as Plato, The dialogues of Plato, creator “Jowett, Benjamin, 1817-1893,” publisher “Oxford : Clarendon Press,” date 1871. Its title page reads “IN FOUR VOLUMES / VOL. III / AT THE CLARENDON PRESS / MDCCCLXXI”; the contents begin Theaetetus at p. 317; and the sentence sits under the running head “THEAETETUS. 377,” with the Stephanus marginal 155 a few lines above. The citation checks out exactly.
  • Independent copy of the same translation: Project Gutenberg eBook 1726 ↗, titled Theaetetus and crediting Benjamin Jowett as translator, contains the clause word for word.
  • Then we tested whether the phrasing is Plato’s or Jowett’s. At the same passage, Perseus’ Theaetetus 155d ↗ gives Harold N. Fowler’s English (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12, Harvard University Press, 1921): “For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.” Same thought, no memorable phrase — the four words that made this quotable are Jowett’s.
Public domain

The Greek original is ancient and long out of copyright, and the exact English shown here is Benjamin Jowett’s translation, first published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford in 1871 — comfortably in the public domain in the United States, and Jowett himself died in 1893. The scanned volume carries the Internet Archive’s note that there are no known US copyright restrictions on the text. That status attaches to this translation: a modern rendering of the same passage would be a separate copyright.

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

What actually gets muddled

For once the famous name is basically right — which, for a Socrates quote, is the exception. What gets muddled here is who composed the words, and which “philosophy begins in wonder” you mean.

Plato also right

Plato wrote the line; Socrates speaks it. Socrates authored no texts at all — Wikipedia ↗ notes he is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of others, chiefly his pupils Plato and Xenophon, and calls the difficulty of reconstructing him the Socratic problem. So “Plato said it” is correct about authorship and “Socrates said it” is correct about the speaker. Neither is an error; a bare “Socrates said” just hides that this is a character in a dialogue Plato composed.

Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893) translator's phrasing

The clause that made this quotable belongs to the Victorian translator. Jowett’s 1871 English gives “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder”; at the identical passage the Loeb translation by Harold N. Fowler (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12, Harvard University Press, 1921) reads “since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy” — see it on Perseus ↗. Accurate, and nobody would put it on a poster.

Alfred North Whitehead a separate real quote

“Philosophy begins in wonder” standing alone is very widely credited to Whitehead, and that credit is sound too — it is his own sentence, not a quotation of Plato. Wikiquote’s Wonder page ↗ cites it to Modes of Thought (1938), Ch. 3, Lecture 7, p. 232, where he goes on to say that when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. Two genuine sources, 1871 and 1938, for one phrase — which is why the credit line flips depending on who is sharing it.

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom” tidied-up, uncited

A neater version drifts about under Socrates’ name. Wikiquote’s Wonder page ↗ carries it credited to “Socrates, as portrayed in Theaetetus by Plato” with no citation attached to it — and it is not what either Jowett or Fowler translated. If you want a line you can source to a page, use the one at the top of this page.

The attribution holds up. Socrates says it at Theaetetus 155d, and the exact English sits on page 377 of volume III of Jowett’s 1871 Dialogues of Plato — scanned and readable ↗. The only footnotes worth keeping: Plato wrote it, and Jowett phrased it.

Context

Why it mattered

The setting is a teenage mathematics prodigy having a small crisis. Theaetetus has just told Socrates that thinking about these puzzles leaves him amazed, and that there are times when his head quite swims. Socrates does not relieve the confusion. He congratulates him on it — his teacher Theodorus was right to call him a philosopher, and the swimming head is the evidence. That is the whole move, and it is why the line has outlived nearly everything around it: it reframes being baffled as a qualification rather than a failure.

Worth knowing what kind of wonder is meant. The Greek verb behind it is thaumazein — Wikipedia’s article on the dialogue ↗ glosses the passage as wonder (thaumazein) belonging to the philosopher. Read in context it sits closer to puzzlement than to awe: what Theaetetus feels is not reverence at a sunset but the specific vertigo of holding three reasonable premises that contradict each other. Socrates then makes a pun on it, which the translation preserves: Iris, messenger of the gods, is the daughter of Thaumas.

Theaetetus says his head swims. Socrates tells him that’s the qualification.

Why the phrase kept travelling

Jowett flagged the line himself. In his introduction to the dialogue — printed alongside the translation in the Project Gutenberg text ↗ — he singles out among the dialogue’s memorable moments “the saying, often repeated by Aristotle and others, that ‘philosophy begins in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas.’” The translator was, in effect, marking his own phrasing as the quotable bit, in the same volume where it first appeared in English.

That helps explain the double credit. A phrase pre-labelled as a famous saying, inside the translation that made Plato an English classic, was always going to travel on its own — which is roughly what happened when Whitehead opened with the same four words in 1938, leaving the internet to choose between them.

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Filed under

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

Wisdom Knowledge Doubt

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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.

The Dialogues of Plato, vol. III (1871) — full scanarchive.org

The Clarendon Press first edition, four volumes, Jowett's translation. Contents begin Theaetetus at p. 317; the quote is on p. 377. This is the page we verified against.
Theaetetus — full text, Jowett translationgutenberg.org

Free, searchable English text of the whole dialogue (Project Gutenberg eBook 1726), including Jowett's long introduction.
Plato — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists this line in its Theaetetus section with the citation 155d, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377 — the anchor we checked against the scan.
Theaetetus 155d — Fowler's Loeb translationperseus.tufts.edu

Harold N. Fowler's 1921 English of the same sentence: 'wonder is the only beginning of philosophy'. The cleanest demonstration that the famous phrasing is Jowett's.
Wonder — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Cites Whitehead's own 'Philosophy begins in wonder' to Modes of Thought (1938), Ch. 3, Lecture 7, p. 232 — the rival credit for the short form.
Theaetetus (dialogue)en.wikipedia.org

Background on the dialogue: written in the early-middle 4th century BC, with Socrates, Theaetetus and his teacher Theodorus of Cyrene as speakers.

The speaker

Who Socrates actually was

Socrates

c. 470–399 BC · Athenian philosopher · wrote nothing himself — known through Plato and Xenophon

Socrates left no writings whatsoever. Everything we have comes from other people’s books — chiefly his pupils Plato and the historian Xenophon, plus the comic playwright Aristophanes and Aristotle, who was born after Socrates died — and those accounts disagree enough that scholars have a name for the difficulty of reconstructing him: the Socratic problem. So every “Socrates quote” is really a quote from somebody’s portrait of Socrates. This one is Plato’s portrait, in the Theaetetus, and it is one of the rare Socratic lines that arrives with a volume, an edition and a page number attached.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Plato, Theaetetus 155d, in The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English with analyses and introductions by B. Jowett, 4 vols. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1871), 3:377. Compare Harold N. Fowler’s translation in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921): “since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/wonder-is-the-feeling-of-a-philosopher-and-philosophy/

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