Heraclitus Quotes

Sinnes are not knowne till they bee acted.

Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice.

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

What a man sees depends on what he looks at and what his previous experience has taught him to see.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

Intellect is not wisdom.

All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

We live by information, not by sight.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything.

Subject is known by what she sees.

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

You should know better.ʺ ʺIʹve never known better,ʺ he countered. ʺYou should know that.

Consciousness of a fact is not knowing it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.

Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos, they [men] are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep.

Can I reject everything my brain experienced? Is intellectual understanding any understanding at all?

What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. [Light in August]

Knowing it and seeing it are two different things.

For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words.

What men have seen they know. . . .

Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic.

We do not hear what we hear..., only what we remember.

It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.