Socrates - “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."

[Graham2001]

The quote in the title is attributed to Socrates and it used by Anti-vaxers and other peddlers of disinformation. Snopes.com looked into the origin of the quote and was only able to trace it online to a post on the Goodreads.com website from 2008. I went to that page and there is no information provided on where the poster (Or even who the poster was.) got it from (They could equally have made it up from the whole cloth.), the goodreads page has no means of commenting on the quote other than to 'like it'.

Here is the link to the Goodreads.com page, which just contains the quote itself.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/48955-when-the-debate-is-lost-slander-becomes-the-tool-of?page=5

Here is the link to the snopes.com article.

The philosopher Socrates said "when debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."

Rating: False

The classical Greek philosopher Socrates is a fixture of literature and culture, but his legacy is complicated by the fact that material attributed to him isn't always directly from him...

...So far as we can tell, the phrase "when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser" emerged roughly around 2008 and appears to have no traceable history prior to that.

I'm wondering if this is a case like the Einstein quote ("It's become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.") that originated in the 1995 film Powder, something that was created for a film or other pop culture item. Searching this one online is tricky, but I'd love to find a pre-2008 source if one exists.

 

[deirdre]

but I'd love to find a pre-2008 source if one exists.

might have to try different variations. i'm seeing "when the debate is over, slander becomes the tool of the loser"

although im seeing nothing for that either prior 2008.

can socrates even really have quotes? Everything he allegedly said is sort of hearsay. (like Jesus i guess)

An enigmatic figure, he made no writings, and is known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers writing after his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. Other sources include the contemporaneous Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Aeschines of Sphettos. Aristophanes, a playwright, is the only source to have written during his lifetime.[10][11]

Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple'".[12] Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the fields of ethics and epistemology. It is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates


And if we're going by Plato... i'd be shocked if he could say anything so succinctly. i'm not seeing the word "debate" at all, in his Apology of Socrates
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/james.lindahl/courses/Phil70A/s3/apology.pdf

 

[deirdre]

here are some similar paraphrasing of Socrates trial (as told in Plato's 'Apology of Socrates)

If there are nasty rumors about me floating around, these are the product of my opponent's slanders.

https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/1191

Socrates suggests the slander is the
result of his search for one wiser than himself. This search required cross-examining those
thought to be wise, only to prove in turn that these wise were in fact ignorant. Thus, his bad name is the result of envy and hatred, and those he long ago showed to be foolish have harbored
animus against him ever since. 20

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/...article=1347&context=gradschool_dissertations

 

[deirdre]

Some Professors weighing in on the quote

Socrates didn't write anything himself, so the picture of who he was and what he said is reliant on others' writings. Plato and Xenophon wrote about Socrates and slander but not in the context of lost debates, said Christopher Moore, a philosophy and classics assistant professor at Penn State. Socrates believed those who slandered him hated philosophy and truth, but he didn't call them losers.

In Plato's "Apology," Socrates points to his effort to find men smarter than himself as the root of slander against him, according to Debra Nails, a Michigan State University philosophy professor emeritus. When Socrates decided other men weren't as smart as him, those men didn't like him very much. However, there's no evidence of him saying any version of the viral image quote.

Plato's and Aristotle's versions of Socrates were not interested in debates as something that could be won or lost, at least not by an individual, according to Christopher Rowe, Durham University classics and ancient history professor emeritus. In Socrates' view, only truth could defeat anyone.

https://www.politifact.com/facebook...e/no-socrates-didnt-call-slander-tool-losers/

 

[deirdre]

2006 version
http://freedomkeys.com/whofundedit.htm

 

[Mendel]

The quote does not describe reality anyway.

Counterexamples from the 2016 US election would be pizzagate and "crooked Hillary": slander used while the debate was ongoing, by the winning side.