Heraclitus Quotes

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Time is a game played beautifully by children.

The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change -

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

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.

Nothing endures but change.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.

How can you hide from what never goes away? --Heraclitus

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

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Man's character is his fate.

We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.

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

How can you hide from what never goes away?

It is in changing that we find purpose.

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

Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.

Character is destiny

Allow yourself to think only those thoughts that match your principles and can bear the bright light of day. Day by day, your choices, your thoughts, your actions fashion the person you become. Your integrity determines your destiny.

The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.

The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts.

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.

The sun is new each day.

Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.

Those who love wisdom must investigate many things

Silence, healing.

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

All are one

What was scattered gathers. What was gathered blows away.

The awake share a common world, but the asleep turn aside into private worlds.

Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire back in the fifth century BC, had it right when he wrote about men on the battlefield. “Out of every one hundred men,” he wrote, “ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior…

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.

All things come into being by conflict of opposites.

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

All things are in flux; the flux is subject to a unifying measure or rational principle. This principle (logos, the hidden harmony behind all change) bound opposites together in a unified tension, which is like that of a lyre, where a stable harmonious sound emerges from the tension of the opposing forces that arise from the bow bound together by the string.

Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death.

What are men? Mortal gods. What are gods? Immortal men.

To get everything you want is not a good thing. Disease makes health seem sweet. Hunger leads to the appreciation of being full-fed. Tiredness creates the enjoyment of resting

Without injustices, the name of justice would mean what?

Seas move away, why not lovers? The harbours of Ephesus, the rivers of Heraclitus disappear and are replaced by estuaries of silt. The wife of Candaules becomes the wife of Gyges. Libraries burn.

Ethos anthropoi daimon--a man's character is his fate.

ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάντατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life.)

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel – a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

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

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Dog bark at what they don't understand.

What I really fear is time. That's the devil: whipping us on when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp, and all is suddenly past, a past that won't hold still, that slides into these inauthentic tales. My past- it doesn't feel real in the slightest. The person who inhabited it is not me. It's as if the present me is constantly dissolving. There's that line from Heraclitus: 'No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.' That's quite right. We enjoy this illusion of continuity, and we call it memory. Which explains, perhaps, why our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories.

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.

Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.

The waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of his own.

Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. (Everything changes, and no thing abides.)

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

Everything flows, nothing stands still.

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

Nature loves to hide.

Tis not too late to seek a newer world

Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back.

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.

History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man's power in the world.

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

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and it's not the same man.

Realize that war is common and justice is strife, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.

When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.

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

It is difficult to fight against anger; for a man will buy revenge with his soul.

All is flux

A man's character is his fate.

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

Men forget where the way leads and what they meet with every day seems strange to them.We should not act and speak like men asleep.

Because it is so unbelievable, the truth often escapes being known.

there is nothing permanent except change--

Any day stands equal to the rest.

Remember that you must behave as at a banquet. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand, and take a moderate share. Does it pass you? Do not stop it. Is it not come yet? Do not yearn in desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. So with regard to children , wife, office, riches; and you will some time or other be worthy to feast with the gods. And if you do not so much as take the things which are set before you, but are able even to forego them, then you will not only be worthy to feast with the gods, but to rule with them also. For, by thus doing, Diogenes and Heraclitus, and others like them, deservedly became divine, and were so recognized.

To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.

τήν τε οἴησιν ἱερὰν νόσον ἔλεγε καὶ τὴν ὅρασιν ψεύδεσθαι (Thinking is a sacred disease, and sight is deceptive.)

People do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.

Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

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.

It is necessary to take what is common as our guide; however, though this logic is universal, the many live as if each individual has his own private wisdom.

It is not appropriate to act and speak like men asleep.

Time is a child playing a game of draughts; the kingship is in the hands of a child.

Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial.

Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?

The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign. The Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.

Thus, the philosopher dislikes marriage as well as what might persuade him into it??marriage is a barrier and a disaster along his route to the optimal. What great philosopher up to now has been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibtniz, Kant, Schopenhauer?? None of these got married. What`s more, we cannot even imagine them married. A married philosopher belongs in a comedy, that`s my principle. And Socrates, the exception, the malicious Socrates, it appears, got married ironically to demonstrate this very principle. Every philosopher would speak as once Buddha spoke when someone told him of the birth his son, "Rahula has been born to me. A shackle has been forged for me." (Rahula here means "a little demon"). To every "free spirit" there must come a reflective hour, provided that previously he has had a one without thought, of the sort that came then to Buddha - "Life in a house," he thought to himself, "is narrow and confined, a polluted place. Freedom consists of abandoning houses;" "because he thought this way, he left the house.

Hippocrates cured many illnesses—and then fell ill and died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire. But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin, Socrates by the human kind. And? You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so much inferior to that which serves it. One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage.

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless. Thus Diogenes, who pottered about by himself, rolling his tub and turning up his nose at the great Alexander, considering us as flies or bags of wind, was really a sharper and more stinging judge, to my taste, than Timon, who was surnamed the hater of men. For what we hate we take seriously. Timon wished us ill, passionately desired our ruin, shunned association with us as dangerous, as with wicked men depraved by nature. Diogenes esteemed us so little that contact with us could neither disturb him nor affect him, and avoided our company, not through fear of association with us, but through disdain of it; he considered us incapable of doing either good or evil.... Our own peculiar condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.