
“The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.”
Source: The Imitation of Christ
“The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.”
Source: The Imitation of Christ
“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
"How to Love God" (12 September 1954).
General sources
Context: When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.
Speech rejecting the demands that he lead his people onto a reservation. (1876)
Context: Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.
The Steam Engine: Comprising an Account of Its Invention and Progressive Improvement, 1827
Context: In June, 1699, Captain Savery exhibited a model of his engine before the Royal Society, and the experiments he made with it succeeded to their satisfaction. It consisted of a furnace and boiler B: from the latter, two pipes, provided with cocks C, proceeded to two steam vessels S, which had branch pipes from a descending main D, and also to a rising main pipe A: each pair of branch pipes had [check] valves a, b to prevent the descent of the water raised by the condensation or by the force of steam. Only one vessel, S, is shown, the other being immediately behind it. One of the steam vessels being filled with steam, condensation was produced by projecting cold water, from a small cistern E, against the vessel; and into the partial vacuum made by that means, the water, by the pressure of the atmosphere, was forced up the descending main D, from a depth of about twenty feet; and on the steam being let into the vessels again, the valve b closed, and prevented the descent of the water, while the steam having acquired force in the boiler, its pressure caused the water to raise the valve a, and ascend to a height proportional to the excess of the elastic force of the steam above the pressure of the air.
“The Creator has blessed all His creations with the freedom of choice.”
Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 516
Sunni Hadith