---
title: "Thought for the day: Socrates on Writing"
url: https://campbell-online.com/blog/2006/01/22/thought-for-the-day-socrates-on-writing/
description: "Socrates. He would be a very simple person… who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or."
published: 2006-01-22
updated: 2006-01-22
---

# Thought for the day: Socrates on Writing

Published 2006-01-22

January 22, 2006 · [Technical communications](https://campbell-online.com/blog/category/technical-communications/) · [Instructional design](https://campbell-online.com/blog/category/instructional-design/)

**Socrates.** He would be a very simple person… who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?

**Phaedrus.** That is most true.

**Socrates.** I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.

([Plato, *Phaedrus*](http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/phaedrus.html) - translated by B. Jowett)

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