# What does Socrates mean by this quote?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-socrates-mean-by-this-quote/648709>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 29, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-socrates-mean-by-this-quote/648709 "2013-01-29T15:14:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 36

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-socrates-mean-by-this-quote/648709/36 "2013-02-04T04:35:57Z")

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For example, the only place online where I can find an actual _citation_ for “an honest man is always a child” attributes it, not to Socrates, but to the later Latin writer Martial: [Honesty - Wikiquote](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Honesty)

Now it could be that Socrates did say it somewheres, but I am currently skeptical. Everywhere I see it attributed to Socrates, I see no actual reference to _where_ the quotation is from. Meanwhile, where I see an actual reference, the attribution turns out not to be to Socrates.

But anyway, the main point is–Plato is best read at the long passage or even the book level. One-liners do not really explain what’s going on in the Socratic corpus. The way you’re reading him reminds me of how people used to treat the Bible in my churches growing up–as a series of pick-and-choose “bible verses” that you can pull out for this occasion or that. Works in a pinch, I guess, but is fundamentally missing the point.

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