Heraclitus Quotes

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

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

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

It is in changing that things find purpose.

No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.

What sense or thought do they have? They follow the popular singers, and they take the crowd as their teacher.

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

You won't discover the limits of the soul, however far you go.

Knowledge is not intelligence.

Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, one living the others death and dying the others life.

Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses.

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.

From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

If we do not expect the unexpected, we will never find it.

The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself.

Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within

Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: "Present, they are absent."

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Not I but the world says it: All is one.

It is harder to fight pleasure than to fight emotion.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

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

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

The unexpected connection is more powerful than one that is obvious.

Nothing endures but change. There is nothing permanent except change. All is flux, nothing stays still.

You may travel far and wide but never will you find the boundaries of the soul.

Knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity.

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth.

The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

The world, an entity out of everything, was created by none of the gods or men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and reg- ularly becoming extinguished.

Things of which there is sight, hearing, apprehension, these I prefer.

It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant; by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.

The only thing that is constant is change.

Knowing many things doesn't teach insight.

Greater dooms win greater destinies.

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

Things keep their secrets.

If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice.

Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.

The universal cosmic process was not created by any god or man.

Men who are lovers of wisdom [i.e., philosophers] must be inquirers into many things.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

Where there is no strife there is decay: 'The mixture which is not shaken decomposes.'

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets

You cannot step twice into the same river.

The only constant is change.