Heraclitus

Heraclitus ( c. 540 BC – c. 480 BC) was a Greek philosopher, born at Ephesus. 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

• All are one.
• Nothing is permanent but change.

- quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• Everything flows, nothing stays still.

- Quoted in Plato , Cratyllus

• What was scattered

gathers.
What was gathered
blows away.

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

- on the Universe.

• 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.
• 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

• Those who love wisdom must investigate many things.
• Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.
• Much learning does not teach understanding.
• Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.
• Man's character is his fate.
• Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.
• 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.
• Character is destiny.
• Of the logos (words, speech, discourse, or meaning) being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this logos they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.

- quoted by Sextus Empiricus

• Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are one.
• ... do not know how to listen or how to speak.
• The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same.
• The way up is the way down.
• Beginning and end, on a circle's circumference, are common.
• Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things.
• Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life.
• As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these.
• Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet.
• Disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest.
• While men drink and wash with water, fish prefer to drink saltwater, pigs prefer to wash in mud, and fowls prefer to wash in dust.
• Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat.
• Asses would rather have refuse than gold.
• All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things ('the whole') flows like a stream.

- Heraclitus's philosophy as summarised by Diogenes Laërtius

• Everything moves.

- ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato

• The bow's name is life, but its work is death.
• There would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites.
• Each substance contains its opposite, making for a continual circular exchange of generation, destruction, and motion that results in the stability of the world.
• War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free.
• War is a creative tension that brings things into existence.
• Gods and men honour those slain in war.
• Every beast is tended by blows.
• People ought to fight to keep their law as to defend the city walls. For all human laws get nourishment from the one divine law.
• The human law partakes of the law of nature, which is at the same time a divine law.
• This world-order (kosmos), the same for all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.
• Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth that of water.
• The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fireburst. Earth is liquefied as sea and measured into the same proportion as it had before it became earth.
• All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares.
• Time (Aion) is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's.
• God sees man the same way man sees children and apes.
• The limits of the soul you could not discover, though traversing every path.
• If all things should become smoke, then perception would be by the nostrils.
• 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.
• To be evenminded

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

• It is in changing that we find purpose.
• How can you hide from what never goes away?
• The awake share a common world, but the asleep turn aside into private worlds.

Mahavir

Nearby pages
Heraclius, Herat, Herault, Herb Alpert, Herbart