Heraclitus Fragments Quotes

Time is a game played beautifully by children.

Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.

To be evenminded is the greatest virtue. Wisdom is to speak the truth and act in keeping with its nature.

Man's character is his fate.

Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.

Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.

Character is destiny

The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.

Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.

People ought to fight to keep their law as to defend the citys walls.

The road up and the road down is one and the same. (ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή) —Fragment 60

It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.

War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free.

Without injustices, the name of justice would mean what?

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.

Stupidity is doomed, therefore, to cringe at every syllable of wisdom.

Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one

Always having what we want may not be the best good fortune Health seems sweetest after sickness, food in hunger, goodness in the wake of evil, and at the end of daylong labor sleep.

The poet was a fool who wanted no conflict among us, gods or people. Harmony needs low and high, as progeny needs man and woman.

The sun is the width of a human foot.

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men having barbarian souls.

Even what those with the greatest reputation for knowing it all claim to understand and defend are but opinions.

Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within

Fire lives in the death of earth, air lives in the death of fire, water lives in the death of air, and earth in the death of water.

The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls. (translation/paraphrase: Terence McKenna)

Give me one man from among ten thousand if he is the best

All is flux

Time is a child playing with droughts. The lordship is to the child.

Ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν: I searched myself.

Traveling on every path, you will not find the boundaries of soul by going; so deep is its measure.

You can't go home again. Your childhood is lost. The friends of your youth are gone. Your present is slipping away from you. Nothing is ever the same.

Eternity is like a child playing at draughts; the kingdom belongs to a child.

You will not discover the limits of the soul by traveling, even if you wander over every conceivable path, so deep is its story.

One thunderbolt strikes root through everything

War is the father of all and the king of all; it proves some people gods, and some people men; it makes some people slaves and some people free.

Things keep their secrets.

If they are gods, why do you lament them? If you lament them, you must no longer regard them as gods.

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.

Aion is a child at play, playing draughts; the kingship is a child's.

Dogs, by this same logic, bark at what they cannot understand.

Although the Word is common to all, many live as if they had a private understanding of their own

One must realize that war is common, and justice strife, and that all things come to be through strife and are (so) ordained.

Justice in our minds is strife. We cannot help but see war makes us as we are.

Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know.

Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse.

Yearning hurts, and what release may come of it feels much like death.

Who will hide from the fire that does not set?

The beginning is the end.

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.

Under the comb the tangle and the straight path are the same.

The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow.

The sun is new every day. (Fragment 6)

Latent structure is master of obvious structure

For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

Though the logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

The living, though they yearn for consummation of their fate, need rest, and in their turn leave children to fulfil their doom.

That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made neither by god or man, replenishes in measure as it burns away.

The waking have one world in common. Sleepers meanwhile turn aside, each into a darkness of his own.

The poet was a fool who wanted no conflict among us, gods or people. Harmony needs low and high, as progeny needs man and woman.

The habit of knowledge is not human but devine.

Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.

The oneness of all wisdom may be found, or not, under the name of God.

The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water. For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth; and from water, soul. Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened. And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.

The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan.

Gods live past our meager death. We die past their ceaseless living.

War, as father of all things, and king, names few to serve as gods, and of the rest makes these men slaves, those free.

How, from a fire that never sinks or sets, would you escape?

It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things. τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει Κεραυνός

When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms - or rather to rest - and they leave children behind them to meet with their dooms in turn.

The prophet’s voice possessed of god requires no ornament, no sweetening of tone, but carries over a thousand years.

Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not.

That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made neither by god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away.

Heraclitus, though, more or less wrote in fragments. His body of work is not unlike that of a comedian from the 1950s: it consists mostly of one-liners.

The river where you set your foot just now is gone those waters― hiving way to this, now this.

From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony.

Give me one man from among ten thousands, if he be the best.

Çok şey bilmek kavramayı öğretmez.

I went in search of myself.

While those who mouth high talk may think themselves high-minded, justice keeps the book on hypocrites and liars.

The sun is new every day.

One would never discover the limits of soul, should one traverse every road so deep a measure does it possess

Men dig tons of earth to find an ounce of gold.

Whoever cannot seek the unforseen, sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.

Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.

If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

One's bearing shapes one's fate.

If there were no sun, all the stars would not suffice to prevent its being night.

What is not yet known those blinded by bad faith can never learn.

From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. The harmony past knowing sounds more deeply than the known.

The life of the body is sustained by the breath which inhaled the dry vapors kindred fire. At night, when the sun is extinguished and the world becomes unconscious, we inhale the dark wet vapors and sink into death-like sleep.

What separates us from Kant just as from Plato and Leibniz: we believe only in becoming, also in matters of spirit, we are historical through and through. This is the great reversal. Lamarck and Hegel - Darwin is only an aftereffect. The manner of thinking of Heraclitus and Empedocles has risen again. Even Kant did not overcome the contradictio in adjecto "pure spirit": but we did.

the hidden unity is better than the visible 57 Good and evil are the same. 56 the harmony of the world is the harmony of oppositions. 59 unite whole and part, agreement and disagreement, discord and accord. From one comes all and all one. 60 They would not know the name of justice were it not for these things. by strife all things arise and are used. there is only one supreme wisdom. it wills and wills not to be called zeus. immortals are mortal, mortals, immortal, living in their death and dying in their life. The way upward and downward are one and the same. The beginning and end are one. The limits of the soul you shall not find out though you should traverse every way. Those who speak with intelligence must speak what is common to all, for all human laws are united by one divine law. Man understands the deity as much and little as the child understands the man. Self control is the highest wisdom, and wisdom is to know truth and consciously to act in accord with nature. it is better to conceal ignorance than expose it. A stupid man loves to be puzzled by every discourse. A man's character is his demon.

The word translated “word” in almost all English versions of John 1 is the Greek logos, a term with a rich and diverse philosophical heritage. The term is common to a number of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. For Heraclitus (535–475 BC), whose thought only remains known to us in small fragments and is therefore very difficult to reconstruct, it appears that the logos is a principle of transformation that orders the cosmos. Its symbol is ever-changing fire, flickering and consuming ever more material, although, in so far as it never does anything other than change, it remains constant. The term also appears in the fragments that remain from the writing of Parmenides (sixth-fifth century BC), who uses it to mean something like thinking, in opposition to habit and sense experience. Whatever the differences between these uses of the term and its other occurrences in ancient Greek thought, one feature marks each of them as distinct from the Johannine account: in every case but John’s, the logos is impersonal. To

People dull their wits with gibberish, and cannot use their ears and eyes. Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know.

Time is a game played beautifully by children.

Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse.

No being, not the sun itself, exceeds due measure, but contending powers set things right.

Fragment 9: We have as One in us that which is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old: because these having transformed are those, and those having transformed are these. The

In Fragment 21 different people step into the same river: New and different waters flow around those who step into the same river. It disperses and comes together .. . flows in and out. .. towards us and away. In Fragment 22 the river is eternally changing, never repeating and yet always flowing the same way. It appears always to be the same river. [Heraclitus says somewhere that] all things are in process and nothing stays still, and [comparing all things to flowing waters, he says] we cannot step twice in the same river. Each

Dogs, by this same logic, bark at what they cannot understand.