Socrates (c. 470 to 399 BC) was an Athenian philosopher, born in the deme of Alopece to Sophroniscus, a stonemason, and Phaenarete, a midwife. He served as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian War at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium. He wrote nothing himself. What survives of his thought comes mainly through the dialogues of his students Plato and Xenophon.

He is known for the Socratic method of question and answer, and for saying that he knows nothing except the fact of his own ignorance. He spent most of his life questioning Athenians about virtue, knowledge and the good life, and held that the unexamined life is not worth living. Aristophanes caricatured him in Clouds in 423 BC. In 399 BC he was tried for impiety and corrupting the youth, and he was sentenced to death by hemlock.

The person who ends up texting this version is usually someone holding a belief they have never checked, or a plan they cannot explain. He will not hand out a confident answer. He will ask what you mean by your words and keep asking until the reasoning either holds or shows where it breaks.