Heraclitus

Heraclitus ( c. 540 - c. 480 BC) was a Greek philosopher, born at Ephesus, and flourished about the year 480 BC. He criticized his predecessors and contemporaries for their failure to see the unity in experience. He was the first western philosopher who went beyond the physical existence to metaphysical and moral theories, and was the first to note how everything throughout the universe is in constant flux, and nothing permanent but in transition from being to nothing and from nothing to being, from life to death and from death to life, that nothing is, that everything becomes, that the truth of being is becoming, that no one, nothing, is exempt from this law, the law symbolised by the fable of the Phoenix in the Fire.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Nothing is permanent but change.

- quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• Everything flows, nothing stays still.

- Quoted in Plato , Cratyllus

• You can't step twice into the same river.

- on the Universe.

• A man's character is his fate.

- quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

• It is weariness to keep toiling at the same things so that one becomes ruled by them.

-Fragments

• Men who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars.

- fragment

Mahavir