Heraclitus Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe.

Heraclitus
The river where you set your foot just now is gone-those waters give way to this, now this.

Heraclitus
Not understanding after hearing they are like the deaf; the saying is evidence for them 'absent when present'.

Heraclitus
The fairest cosmos is as a rubbish heap piled up haphazardly.

Heraclitus
War is father of all and king of all: some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free.

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

Heraclitus
The road up and the road down is one and the same.

Heraclitus
Much learning does not teach understanding.

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

Heraclitus
One must know that war is common and justice is strife, and that all things happen by strife and necessity.

Heraclitus
It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Heraclitus
If you do not expect it, you will not find out the unexpected.

Heraclitus
People asleep are workers, taking part in the work of the cosmos.

Heraclitus
Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one

Heraclitus
For when is death not within ourselves?... Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old.

Heraclitus
Sea water is most clean/pure and most polluted; for fish it is drinkable, for humans undrinkable and destructive.

Heraclitus
Disease makes health pleasant and good, as does hunger satiety and weariness rest.

Heraclitus
Everything flows and nothing stays…You can't step twice into the same river.

Heraclitus
There is one wisdom, to understand how reason steers everything through everything.

Heraclitus
Applicants for wisdom
do what I have done:
inquire within

Heraclitus
It is hard to fight against impulse; whatever it wants it buys at the expense of soul.

Heraclitus
The people should fight for their law as for their city wall.

Heraclitus
Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

Heraclitus
Death is what we see when awake, and what we see asleep is sleep.

Heraclitus
This world... ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.

Heraclitus