Nothing Is Constant But Change

The majority of people have no agreement of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, practice they take whatsoever right cognition of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Dogs, also, bark at what they exercise non know.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ἡράκλειτος, Herakleitos; c. 535 BC – 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, known for his doctrine of change beingness central to the universe, and for establishing the term Logos (λόγος) in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and central order of the Cosmos.

Quotes [edit]

Human being, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.

τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν
- All entities motion and nothing remains still.
- As quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 401d

πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει
- Everything changes and nothing stands nevertheless.
- As quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 402a
- Variants and variant translations:
  Everything flows and nothing stays.
  Everything flows and nothing abides.
  Everything gives style and nothing stays stock-still.
  Everything flows; cypher remains.
  All is flux, zero is stationary.
  All is flux, nothing stays notwithstanding.
  All flows, aught stays.
- Πάντα ῥεῖ
  - Everything flows.
    - This statement occurs in Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 1313.xi; while some sources attribute to Simplicius the coining of the specific phrase "πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei)", pregnant "everything flows/is in a state of flux", to characterize the concept in the philosophy of Heraclitus, the essential phrasing "everything changes" and variations on it, in contexts where Heraclitus'due south idea is being alluded to, was electric current in both Plato and Aristotle's writings.

δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.
- Yous could not step twice into the aforementioned river.
- Every bit quoted in Plato, Cratylus, 402a

τὴν μεταβολὴν ὁδὸν ἄνω κάτω, τόν τε κόσμον γίνεσθαι κατ' αὐτήν.
- Change he chosen a pathway up and down, and this determines the nascency of the world.
- From Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, Volume IX, section 8

αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.
- Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a kid.
- Quoted by Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, iv (Fragment 52), as translated in Reality (1994), by Carl Avren Levenson and Jonathan Westphal, p. 10
- Variants:
- History is a child building a sand-castle past the bounding main, and that child is the whole majesty of human being'due south power in the world.
  - As quoted in Contemporary Literature in Translation (1976), p. 21
- A lifetime is a kid playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a kid.
  - Every bit quoted in The Beginning of All Wisdom: Timeless Advice from the Ancient Greeks (2003) by Steven Stavropoulos, p. 95
- Time is a game played beautifully past children.
  - As quoted in Fragments (2001) translated past Brooks Haxton
- Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.
  - As quoted in The Fine art and Thought of Heraclitus (1979) translated past Charles H. Kahn

χαλεπώτερον ἡδονῇ μάχεσθαι ἢ θυμῷ
- It is harder to fight confronting pleasance than against anger.
- As quoted by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ideals, Book 2 (1105a)

χρὴ γὰρ εὖ μάλα πολλῶν ἴστορας φιλοσόφους ἄνδρας εἶναι
- Men that dearest wisdom must exist acquainted with very many things indeed.
- As quoted Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 140, vi (Fragment 35)

Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.
1. War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.
2. State of war is the father and rex of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free. (G. T. W. Patrick, 1889)
  - Hippolytus, Ref. haer. nine. 9 (Fragment 53). Context: "And that the father of all created things is created and uncreated, the made and the maker, nosotros hear him (Heraclitus) saying, 'War is the father and king of all,' etc."
  - Plutarch, de Iside 48, p. 370. Context, see frag. 43.
  - Proclus in Tim. 54 A (comp. 24 B).
  - Compare Chrysippus from Philodem. P. eusebeias, vii. p. 81, Gomperz.
  - Lucianus, Quomodo hist. conscrib. 2; Idem, Icaromen 8.
3. See likewise: πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς
4. Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (1942–1943)
Τίς γὰρ αὐτῶν νόος ἢ φρήν; [δήμων] ἀοιδοῖσι ἕπονται καὶ διδασκάλῳ χρέωνται ὁμίλῳ, οὐκ εἰδότες ὅτι πολλοὶ κακοὶ ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοί. αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἓν ἀντία πάντων οἱ ἄριστοι, κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται ὅκωσπερ κτήνεα.
1. The all-time people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but about people stuff themselves like cattle.
2. For what sense or agreement have they? They follow minstrels and accept the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all – immortal celebrity among mortals; merely the masses stuff themselves like cattle. (G.T.W. Patrick, 1889)
  "The passage is restored as to a higher place by Bernays (Heraclitea i. p. 34), and Bywater (p. 43), from the post-obit sources:
  - Clement of Alex. Strom. five. 9, p. 682.
  - Proclus in Alcib. p. 255 Creuzer, = 525 ed. Cous. ii.
  - Clement of Alex. Strom. iv. seven, p. 586."

Ten thousand do non turn the scale against a single man of worth.
- in Eric Hoffer, Betwixt the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 107

Greater fates gain greater rewards
- As quoted by The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature; Translated from the Greek Text of Bywater, with an Introduction Historical and Critical, by Thou. T. Due west. Patrick. Page 108
- Alternative translation: Big results crave big ambitions.
The many are mean; but the few are noble.
- in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 108

Numbered fragments [edit]

Different sources sometimes number many of these fragments of the expressions of Heraclitus differently.

You could non step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

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

τοῦ λόγου δ' ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν
- Though wisdom is common, even so the many live equally if they had a wisdom of their own.
- Fragment 2, equally quoted in Against the Mathematicians by Sextus Empiricus
- Variant translation: And so we must follow the common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

οὐ γὰρ φρονέουσι τοιαῦτα [οἱ] πολλοί, ὁκόσοι ἐγκυρεῦσιν, οὐδὲ μαθόντες γινώσκουσιν, ἑωυτοῖσι δὲ δοκέουσι.
- The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily encounter, nor, when instructed, do they have whatever right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.
- Source: Cloudless, Stromates, 2, eight, one
- Fragment 5, as translated by G. Westward. T. Patrick

συνάψιες ὅλα καὶ οὐχ ὅλα, συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον, συνᾷδον διᾷδον, καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα.
- Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from i all things.
- Fragment 10
- Variant translation: From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.
- Ever-newer waters catamenia on those who stride into the same rivers.
- Fragment 12

ἐὰν μὴ ἔλπηται ἀνέλπιστον, οὐκ ἐξευρήσει
- He who does not look will not discover out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.
- Fragment 18, as quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 105
- Variants:
- He who does not expect the unexpected will not observe it out.
  - The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 129
- He who does not expect the unexpected will non find it, since it is trackless and unexplored.
  - As quoted in Helen by Euripides, edited past William Allan (2008), p. 278
- Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not observe it, for it is hidden and thickly tangled.
  - Rendering ἐὰν μή "unless" is more English language-friendly without being inaccurate. As for the last clause, the indicate is that you tin neither discover it nor navigate your way through it. The blastoff-privatives propose using similar metaphoric adjectives to keep the Greek 'feel.' (Due south. Northward. Jenks, 2014)

ἄνθρωπος ἐν εὐφρόνῃ φάος ἅπτεται ἑαυτῷ [ἀποθανὼν] ἀποσβεσθεὶς
- Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.
- Fragment 26

κόσμον τόνδε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν οὐτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ' ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα
- This universe, which is the aforementioned for all, has not been made past any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an always-living fire, kindling itself past regular measures and going out by regular measures.
- Fragment 30
- Variant translations:
  The world, an entity out of everything, was created by neither gods nor men, but was, is and will exist eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and regularly becoming extinguished.
  This world . . . ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures beingness kindled and in measure going out.
- That which always was,
  and is, and will be everlasting fire,
  the same for all, the cosmos,
  made neither past god nor man,
  replenishes in mensurate
  as it burns away.
  - Translated by Brooks Haxton

ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα
- The wise is 1 only. Information technology is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.
- Fragment 32

πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει
- Much learning does non teach understanding.
- Fragment 40

μάχεσθαι χρὴ τὸν δῆμον ὑπὲρ τοῦ νόμου ὅκωσπερ τείχεος
- The people must fight for its law as for its walls.
- Fragment 44

οὐκ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλὰ τοῦ λόγου ἀκούσαντας ὁμολογεῖν σοφόν ἐστιν ἓν πάντα εἶναί
- It is wise to mind, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.
- Fragment 50, as translated in the Loeb Classics edition
- Variant translations:
  Listening not to me simply to reason, it is wise to agree that all is one.
  Listening not to me but to the Word it is wise to agree that all things are ane.
  He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is 1.
  Information technology is wise to hearken, non to me, but to my Give-and-take, and to confess that all things are 1.
- The word translated in these quotes and many others as "The Word" or "Reason", is the greek word λόγος (Logos).

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή
- The road upwards and the road down is 1 and the same.
- Fragment threescore
- Variant translations:
  The road upwards and the road down are one and the same.
  The road uphill and the road downhill are i and the aforementioned.
  The way up and the manner down are 1 and the same.

ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη εὐφρόνη, χειμὼν θέρος, πόλεμος εἰρήνη, κόρος λιμός
- God is day and night, wintertime and summertime, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.
- Fragment 67

ταὐτό τ' ἔνι ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκὸς καὶ [τὸ] ἐγρηγορὸς καὶ καθεῦδον καὶ νέον καὶ γηραιόν
- And it is the aforementioned thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, immature and old.
- Fragment 88

τοῖς ἐγρηγορόσιν ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον εἶναι, τῶν δὲ κοιμωμένων ἕκαστον εἰς ἴδιον ἀποστρέφεσθαι
- The waking have one world in common; sleepers accept each a private earth of his own.
- Fragment 89
- Plutarch, Of Superstition

ποταμῷ γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμβῆναι δὶς τῷ αὐτῷ
- You cannot step twice into the same river.
- Fragment 91
- Plutarch, On the EI at Delphi

Although the Law of Reason is mutual, the majority of people alive as though they had an understanding of their own.
- Fragment 92, as translated by Grand.Due west.T. Patrick, trans.

Men are at variance with the one matter with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.
- Fragment 93
- Friedrich Nietzsche's translation: The law under which most of them ceaselessly have commerce they reject for themselves. (The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Chapter ten)]

νέκυες γὰρ κοπρίων ἐκβλητότεροι
- Corpses are more fit to exist cast out than dung.
- Fragment 96

κύνες γὰρ καὶ βαΰζουσινὃν, ἂν μὴ γινώσκωσι.
- Dogs, also, bawl at what they do not know.
- Fragment 97

ἀμαθίην κρύπτειν ἄμεινον
- Information technology is better to conceal ignorance than to betrayal it.
- Fragment 109
- Variant translation: Hide our ignorance equally we volition, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

ἀνθρώποις γίνεσθαι ὁκόσα θέλουσιν οὐκ ἄμεινον
- It would not be ameliorate if things happened to people just every bit they wish.
- Fragment 110
- Variant translation: It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Τίς γὰρ αὐτῶν νόος ἢ φρήν; δήμων ἀοιδοῖσι ἕπονται καὶ διδασκάλῳ χρέωνται ὁμίλῳ, οὐκ εἰδότες ὅτι πολλοὶ κακοὶ ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοί. αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἓν ἀντία πάντων οἱ ἄριστοι, κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται ὅκωσπερ κτήνεα.
- For what sense or agreement have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men cull ane matter above all—immortal glory amid mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.
- Fragment 111, equally translated by G.West.T. Patrick

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.
- Fragment 114

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
- Character is destiny.
- Fragment 119
- Variant translations:
  Character is fate.
  Human being'south character is his fate.
  A man's graphic symbol is his fate.
  A human being's character is his guardian divinity.
  One's bearing shapes one'due south fate.

φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
- Nature is wont to hibernate herself.
- Fragment 123

Disputed [edit]

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.
- As translated by Philip Wheelwright in Heraclitus (1959)

Many statements paraphrase or extend upon his famous assertions that "everything changes" in means which arguably diverge from valid translation, and nonetheless have become widely attributed to Heraclitus:

Modify is the simply abiding.

At that place is nothing permanent except change.

Misattributed [edit]

Of Every Ane-Hundred Men, 10 shouldn't even exist there, 80 are nothing only targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah just the One, Ane of them is a Warrior... and He volition bring the others back.
- Attributed to "Hericletus c. 500 B.C." [sic] in The Tactical Rifle (1999) past Gabriel Suarez; no before source has been institute.

Quotes about Heraclitus [edit]

Information technology was non Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, alone, who taught that the Universe evolves, and its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into that of water, etc. Heraclitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and burn is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the aforementioned of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years b.c.) of h2o, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all these philosophers, by showing that though each was correct, the arrangement of none was complete.
- H.P. Blavatsky, The Hole-and-corner Doctrine, Vol. 1 of four (1888)

Heraclitus (2.0) iii 4 1 two 3 (His point in evolution & rays)
- Benjamin Creme in The List of Initiates, Their rays and phase of evolution, equally published in Maitreya's Mission Volumes One, Ii and Iii, every bit well as those published in Share International between April 1997 and August 2014.

[With Heraclitus] we run into land; there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1892), trans. Eastward. Due south. Haldane, p. 279

I walked on to the next corner, sabbatum on a demote at a coach cease, and read in my new volume nigh Heraclitus. All things menstruation like a river, he said; nothing abides. Parmenides, on the other hand, believed that nothing always inverse, it only seemed so. Both views appealed to me.
- Ross Macdonald, The Arctic (1963), Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition, pp. 209-210.

In other countries, too, the idea of a creation was sternly rejected, every bit, for instance, by Heraclitus, who declares that no god and no man made this world, just that it was always and is and volition be, an eternal fire, assuming forms and destroying them. And this protestation, it should be remembered, came from a human being who was able to say with equal honesty that 'God is twenty-four hour period and dark, wintertime and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger—and that he is called according to the pleasure of every i.'
- Max Müller, Natural Faith (1892) p. 253.

Herakleitos, nigh 460 B.C., one of the boldest thinkers of ancient Greece, declared that Homer deserved to be ejected from public assemblies and flogged...
- Max Müller, Introduction to the Scientific discipline of Religion (1873) p. 343.

If the flow is steady, the field velocity vectors and the organization of streamlines remain unaffected past the progress of fourth dimension. Looking at the vector field and its streamlines we do not detect any change. Nonetheless if nosotros could distinguish the different particles of fluid from each other, we could observe incessant change...
We have here 2 aspects of a steady menses, ane of unchanging persistence, the other of incessant change. ...Heraclitus was called the "Dark Philosopher"; his views of human affairs were sombre and his sayings obscure. ...
"You lot cannot look twice at the aforementioned river; for fresh waters are always flowing in."
"We look and do non look at the aforementioned rivers; we are, and nosotros are not."
What is the intended pregnant of these sentences? I exercise not venture to detect out. Yet I remember that the originator of these senteces came pretty shut to formulating the concept "steady flow of a fluid."
- George Pólya, Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

When... Heraclitus names the world an ever-living fire that... extinguishes itself and again kindles itself, when... all is exchanged for fire and burn down for all... he can but empathize by this that fire, this restless, all-consuming, all-transmuting, and as (in oestrus) all-vivifying element, represents the constant strength of this eternal alteration and transformation, the notion of life, in the nearly vivid and energetic manner. ...the means of which the power of motility that is precedent to all matter assets itself for the product of the living process of things. Heraclitus... explains the multiplicity of things... [fire] condenses itself into fabric elements, first air, then h2o, then world. ...These 2 processes of extinction and ignition... alternating... in perpetual rotation with each other and... in stated periods the world resolves itself into the key burn down, in order to re-create itself out of it again. ...[F]ire is to him... the principle of motion, of physical as of spiritual vitality; the soul itself is a fiery vapour; its power and perfection depend on its being pure from all grosser and duller elements.
- Albert Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy (1868) pp. 21-22.

The role I understand is splendid, and so likewise is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; just information technology needs a Delian diver to become to the bottom of it.
- Socrates, when asked his opinion of Heraclitus's treatise, every bit quoted in Diogenes Laërtius'south Lives of Eminent Philosophers (ed. R. D. Hicks), Book Ii, Ch. 5, sec. 22.

I cannot approve of Heraclitus, who, being cocky-taught and big-headed, said, "I have explored myself." Nor can I praise him for hiding his verse form in the temple of Artemis, in order that it might be published afterwards as a mystery; and those who take an involvement in such things say that Euripides the tragic poet came there and read it, and, gradually learning information technology by heart, carefully handed downward to posterity this darkness of Heraclitus.
- Tatian, Address to the Greek P. 7 Pratten translation

If neither sub-diminutive particles nor organic species exemplify the 'permanent entities' of Greek metaphysics, what else in the real world does so? ...Two hundred years of historical research have had their upshot. Whether we turn to social or intellectual history, evolutionary zoology, historical geology or astronomy—whether we consider explanatory theories or star-clusters, societies or cultures, languages or disciplines, organic species or the Earth itself—the verdict is not Parmenidean but Heraclitean. As we now understand information technology, nothing in the empirical world possesses the permanent unchanging identity which all Greek natural philosophers (the Epicureans apart) presupposed in the ultimate elements of Nature. Then, if we... are to entertain metaphysical thoughts almost the nature of things-in-general consequent with the residual of our late-twentieth-century ideas, we must explore the consequences of the mod, post-Darwinian or 'populational' arroyo, equally practical not just to species, but to historical entities of all kinds. Confronted with the question, 'How exercise permanent entities preserve their identity through all their apparent changes?', nosotros must simply deny the validity of the question itself. In its place, nosotros must substitute the question, 'How do historical entities maintain their coherence and continuity, despite all the real changes they undergo?'
- Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding (1972) Vol. 1 The Collective Use and Development of Concepts.

External links [edit]

Heraclitus at the Cyberspace Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Fragments (original Greek text)
Philoctetesː Fragments (original Greek text)
Fragments of Heraclitus – parallel Greek with links to Perseus, French, and English
Heraclitus Fragments in Greek (Unicode) and English
Heraclitus: The Consummate Fragments, William Harris (translator), Greek and English language (DK numbers) with commentary (PDF file)
Heraclitus Bilingual Anthology (in Greek and English language, adjacent)
Heraclitus of Ephesus by Giannis Stamatellos

Ancient Greek schools of philosophy
Pre-Socratic	Anaxagoras • Anaximander • Anaximenes • Democritus • Empedocles • Heraclitus • Leucippus • Melissus • Parmenides • Protagoras • Pythagoras • Thales • Zeno of Elea
Socratic	Antisthenes • Aristippus • Aristotle • Diogenes of Sinope • Euclid of Megara • Phaedo of Elis • Plato • Socrates
Hellenistic	Apollonius of Tyana • Augustine • Epictetus • Epicurus • John Philoponus • Lucretius • Plotinus • Proclus • Pyrrho • Sextus Empiricus • Zeno of Citium