“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
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W.B. Yeats 255
Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939Related quotes
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
No findable citation to Socrates. First appears in this form in the 1990s, such as in the Douglas Bradley article "Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley", Wisconsin Ideas, UW System, 1994. It appears to be a variant on a statement from Plutarch in On Listening to Lectures: "The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth." Alternate translation, from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1927 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_auditu*.html: "For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth." Often quoted as, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." Variants of the quote that are correctly attributed to Plutarch but which substitute "education" for "the mind" date back at least as far as the 1960s, as seen in the 1968 book Vision and Image by James Johnson Sweeney, p. 119 http://books.google.com/books?id=d58FAAAAMAAJ&q=plutarch#search_anchor.
Variants with "education" are also sometimes misattributed to William Butler Yeats, as in the 1993 book The Harper Book of Quotations (third edition), p. 138 http://books.google.com/books?id=THl7kUfSqCUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false. In the previously-mentioned Vision and Image, the misquote of Plutarch involving "education" (which has exactly the same wording as the quote attributed to Yeats in The Harper Book of Quotations) is immediately preceded by a different quote from Yeats ("Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions but in getting rid of them"), so it's possible this is the source of the confusion—see the snippets here http://books.google.com/books?id=d58FAAAAMAAJ&q=yeats+culture#search_anchor and here http://books.google.com/books?id=d58FAAAAMAAJ&q=%22getting+rid+of+them%22#search_anchor.
The misattribution may also be related to a statement about Plato's views made by Benjamin Jowett in the introduction to his translation of Plato's Republic (in which all the main ideas were attributed to Socrates, as in all of Plato's works), on p. cci http://books.google.com/books?id=Cg_QX4yoOSQC&pg=PR201#v=onepage&q&f=false of the third edition (1888): "Education is represented by him, not as the filling of a vessel, but as the turning the eye of the soul towards the light." Jowett seems to be loosely paraphrasing a statement Plato attributes to Socrates in a dialogue with Glaucon, in sections 518b http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D7%3Asection%3D518b– 518c http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D7%3Asection%3D518c of book 7 of The Republic, where Socrates says: "education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes … But our present argument indicates that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body."
Further discussion of the history of this quote can be found in this entry http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ from the "Quote Investigator" website.
Misattributed
“Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.”
"Sand Dabs, Six"
Winter Hours (1999)
University of Havana address (2005)
Context: Man is born egotistical, a result of the conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that fills us with virtues. Nature makes us do things instinctively; one of these is the instinct for survival which can lead to infamy, while on the other side, our conscience can lead us to great acts of heroism. It doesn’t matter what each one of us is like, how different we are from each other, but when we unite we become one.
It is amazing that in spite of the differences between human beings, they can become as one in a single instant or they can be millions, and they can be a million strong just through their ideas. Nobody followed the Revolution as a cult to anyone or because they felt personal sympathy with any one person. It is only by embracing certain values and ideas that an entire people can develop the same willingness to make sacrifices of any one of those who loyally and sincerely try to lead them toward their destiny.
“Oh, tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire.”
Ode, Concord, July 4, 1857
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“They lower pails from heaven's walls to catch the milk-maids mirth.”
"Prescience" <!-- p. 18 -->
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Context: p>A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth,
But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth.The angels grow quite wistful over worldly things below;
They hear the hurdy-gurdies in the Candle Makers Row.They listen for the laughter from the antics of the earth;
They lower pails from heaven's walls to catch the milk-maids mirth.</p
“Muslims turn fire into light, wrath into mercy.”
16 June 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013
“For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.”
Carlyle, Essays, Death of Goethe. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
1890s and attributed from posthumous publications