Heraclitus Quotes

“The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.”

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

“Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.”

“Bigotry is the sacred disease.”

“There is harmony in the tension of opposites, as in the case of the bow and lyre.”

“Of all whose words I have heard, no one attains to this, to know that wisdom is apart from all.”

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

“For those who are awake, the Cosmos is One.”

“What was scattered, gathers.What was gathered, blows away”

“The best of men choose one thing in preference to all else, immortal glory in preference to mortal good; whereas the masses simply glut themselves like cattle.”

“Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.”

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

“The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own”

“Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.”

“Things keep their secrets.”

“It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.”

“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.”

“May you have plenty of wealth, you men of Ephesus, in order that you may be punished for your evil ways”

“The only thing that is constant is change.”

“For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."”

“The people must fight on behalf of the law as though for the city wall.”

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

“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed... Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool; the moist dries, the parched becomes moist... It is in changing that things find repose.”

“Everything changes but change itself. Everything flows and nothing remains the same... You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go flowing ever on.”

“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.”