Heraclitus Quotes

Nothing is, everything is becoming.

Changing, everything is changing.

Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?

Heraclitus somewhere says that all things are in process and nothing stays still, and likening existing things to the stream of a river he says that you would not step twice into the same river.

No one can step twice into the same river, nor touch mortal substance twice in the same condition. By the speed of its change, it scatters and gathers again.

[Heraclitus speaks as if] in entrancement ... but [also] truthfully.

[Heraclitus] concluded that coming-to-be itself could not be anything evil or unjust.

You can not step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

All is flux, nothing is stationary.

All things flow, nothing abides.

All things come into being through opposition and all are in flux like a river

Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers.

I have been in love with the thought of Heraclitus.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.

Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

It was Heraclitus' ideas that seized Nietzsche so totally that he became completely mad.

For, in the language of Heraclitus, the virtuous soul is pure and unmixed light, springing from the body as a flash of lightning darts from the cloud. But the soul that is carnal and immersed in sense, like a heavy and dank vapor, can with difficulty be kindled, and caused to raise its eyes heavenward.

All is flux; nothing stays still.

You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.

You cannot step twice into the same river.

[Heraclitus had] pride not in logical knowledge but rather in intuitive grasping of the truth.