Protagoras

Protagoras ( c. 485 - c. 410 B. C. ) was one of the earliest of the Greek Sophists, the thinker who was born at Abdera, and who flourished in 440 BC. He taught at Athens, from which he was banished as a blasphemer, as having called in question the existence of the gods. Protagoras taught that man was the measure of all things, of those that exist, that they are; and of those things that do not exist, that they are not; and that there is nothing absolute, that all is an affair of subjective conception.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Of the Gods I know nothing, whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form. Many things stand in the way of knowledge - the obscurity of the subject, the brevity of human life.

- Quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent philosophers.

• Man is the measure of all things, of things that they are, of things that are not, that they are not.

- Quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent philosophers.

Herodotus