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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Attributed to Aristotle; not in his works

Philosophy

The story behind the card

This sentence appears nowhere in Aristotle's surviving works. Its earliest known printing is in the American teacher Lowell Bennion's 1959 book Religion and the Pursuit of Truth, which presents it as Aristotle's thought. The closest real passage is in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book I): an educated person expects only as much precision as each subject allows. The popular line is worth keeping, but it belongs to the 20th century.

Türkçe oku
Bir düşünceyi benimsemeden üzerinde düşünebilmek, eğitimli bir zihnin işaretidir.
Aristoteles'e mal edilir; eserlerinde geçmez

Bu cümle Aristoteles'in günümüze ulaşan hiçbir eserinde geçmez. Bilinen en eski basılı hâli, Amerikalı eğitimci Lowell Bennion'ın 1959 tarihli Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (Din ve Hakikat Arayışı) kitabındadır; Bennion sözü Aristoteles'in düşüncesi olarak sunar. Aristoteles'te buna en yakın gerçek pasaj Nikomakhos'a Etik'in I. kitabındadır: Eğitimli insan, her konudan ancak o konunun elverdiği kadar kesinlik bekler. Yaygın söz akılda tutmaya değer, ama 20. yüzyıla aittir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Aristotle
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