Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·81 of 348
"First, do no harm (from the Hippocratic Oath)."
They never said that.
What people say
"First, do no harm (from the Hippocratic Oath)."
What was actually said
"The phrase is not in the original Hippocratic Oath." Hippocrates (attributed) — Hippocrates, Of the Epidemics, Book I (c. 400 BCE)
Why it stuck
The oath counsels avoiding harm in different wording. "First, do no harm" — primum non nocere — is Latin, not Greek, and appears as a stand-alone maxim only in the 19th century.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.