All Quotes

"In the fragments... we find nothing about rarefaction and condensation. The expression used is "exchange" (fr. 22)... a very good name for... when fire gives out smoke and takes in fuel..."

"[O]ur best account of the Theophrastean of Herakleitos is the fuller of the two accounts... in Laertios Diogenes... as follows:— ...He held that Fire was the element, and that all things were an exchange for fire, produced by condensation and rarefaction. But he explains nothing clearly. All things were produced in opposition, and all things were in flux like a river. The all is finite and the world is one. It arises from fire, and is consumed again by fire alternately through all eternity in... cycles. This happens according to fate. That which leads to the becoming of the opposites is called War and Strife; that which leads to the final conflagration is Concord and Peace. He called change the upward and the downward path, and held that the world comes into being in virtue of this. When fire is condensed it becomes moist, and when compressed it turns to water; water being congealed turns to earth, and this he calls the downward path. And, again, the earth is in turn liquefied, and from it water arises, and from that everything else; for he refers almost everything to the evaporation from the sea. This is the path upwards. R. P. 36 He held, too, that exhalations arose both from the sea and the land; some bright and pure, others dark. Fire was nourished by the bright ones, and moisture by the others. He does not make it clear what is the nature of that which surrounds the world. He held, however, that there were bowls in it with the concave sides turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations were collected and produced flames. These were the heavenly bodies. The flame of the sun was the brightest and warmest; for the other heavenly bodies were more distant from the earth; and for that reason gave less light and heat. The moon, on the other hand, was nearer the earth; but it moved through an impure region. The sun moved in a bright and unmixed region, and at the same time was at just the right distance from us. That is why it gives more heat and light. The eclipses of the sun and moon were due to the turning of the bowls upwards, while the monthly phases of the moon were produced by a gradual turning of its bowl. Day and night, months and seasons and years, rains and winds, and things like these, were due to the different exhalations. The bright exhalation, when ignited in the circle of the sun, produced day, and the preponderance of the opposite exhalations produced night. The increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced summer, and the preponderance of moisture from the dark exhalation produced winter. He assigns the causes of other things in conformity with this. As to the earth, he makes no clear statement about its nature, any more than he does about that of the bowls. These, then, were his opinions. R. P. 39 b."

"How is it that, in spite of this constant flux, things appear relatively stable? ...[I]t is owing to the observance of the "measures," in virtue of which the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the long run remains the same, though its substance is constantly changing, Certain "measures" of the "ever-living fire" are always being kindled, while like "measures" are always going out (fr. 20)..."

"Αll things are "exchanged" for fire and fire for all things (fr. 22), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as much. “The sun will not exceed his measures” (fr. 29)."

"Herakleitos... explained the world by man rather than man by the world. ...Aristotle implies that soul is identical with the dry exhalation, and this is ...confirmed by the fragments. Man is made... of... fire, water, and earth. But, just as in the macrocosm fire is... the one wisdom, so in the microcosm... fire alone is conscious. When it has left the body..., the mere earth and water, is... worthless (fr. 85)."

"[T]he fire which animates man is subject to the "upward and downward path," just as much as the fire of the world. ..."All things are passing, both human and divine, upwards and downwards by exchanges.""

"We are just as much in perpetual flux as anything else in the world. We are and are not the same for two consecutive instants (fr. 81). The fire in us is perpetually becoming water, and the water earth; but, as the opposite process goes on simultaneously, we appear to remain the same."

"Man is subject to... in his "measures" of fire and water... [T]his gives rise to the alternations of sleeping and waking, life and death."

"The locus classicus on this... is... Sextus Empiricus, which reproduces the account of the Herakleitean psychology given by Ainesidemos... (R. P. 41):— The natural philosopher is of opinion that what surrounds us is rational and endowed with consciousness. According to Herakleitos, when we draw in this divine reason by... respiration, we become rational. In sleep we forget, but at our waking we become conscious once more. For in sleep... the mind... is cut off from... that which surrounds us, and only our connexion... by... respiration is preserved as a... root (from which the rest may spring again); and, when... thus separated, it loses the power of memory... When we awake again... it looks out through the openings of the senses, as if through windows, and coming together with the surrounding mind, it assumes the power of reason. Just... as embers... brought near the fire, change and become red-hot, and go out when they are taken away... so does the portion of... mind... become irrational when... cut off, and... become of like nature to the whole... through the greatest number of openings. In this passage there is... a... large admixture of later... ideas. In particular... identification of "that which surrounds us" with the air... for Herakleitos can have known nothing of air, which in his day was regarded as a form of water... The reference to the pores or openings of the senses is probably foreign... for the theory of pores is due to Alkmaion. ...[T]he distinction between mind and body is far too sharply drawn. ...[T]he important rôle assigned to respiration may very well be Herakleitean; for we ... met with it ...in Anaximenes. ...[T]he striking simile of the embers which glow when ...near the fire is genuine (cf. fr. 77)."

"The true Herakleitean doctrine doubtless was, that sleep was produced by the encroachment of moist, dark exhalations from the water in the body, which cause the fire to, burn low. In sleep, we lose contact with the fire in the world which is common to all, and retire to a world of our own (fr. 95). In a soul where the fire and water are evenly balanced, the equilibrium is restored in the morning by an equal advance of the bright exhalation."

"[I]n no soul are the fire and water... evenly balanced for long. One... acquires predominance, and the result... is death."

"It is death... to souls to become water (fr. 68); but that is... what happens to souls which seek after pleasure... a moistening of the soul (fr. 72), as... in... the drunken man, who... has moistened his soul to... an extent that he does not know where he is going (fr. 73). Even in gentle relaxation over our cups, it is... difficult to hide folly... (fr. 108)."

"That is why it is... necessary... to quench wantonness (fr. 103); for whatever our heart’s desire insists on it purchases at the price of life... [i.e.,] the fire within us (fr. 105)."

"The dry soul, that which has least moisture, is... best (fr. 74); but... preponderance of fire causes... a... different death... and wins "greater portions"... (fr. 101). ...[T]hose who fall in battle share their lot (fr. 102)."

"Those who die the fiery... death, become... gods... in a different sense from that in which the one Wisdom is god. It is probable that the corrupt fragment 123 refers to this unexpected fate (fr. 122)..."

"[A]s summer and winter are one, and... reproduce one another by their "opposite tension," so do life and death... and so... youth and age (fr. 78)."

"[T]he soul will be now living and now dead... it will only turn to fire or water... to recommence... its unceasing upward and downward path."

"The soul that has died from excess of moisture sinks down to earth; but from the earth comes water, and from water is once more exhaled a soul (fr. 68)."

"So, too... (fr. 67)... gods and men are... one. They live each others' life, and die each others' death. Those mortals that die the fiery death become immortal... [i.e.,] the guardians of the quick and the dead (fr. 123); and those immortals become mortal in their turn."

"Everything is... the death of something else (fr. 64)."

"The living and the dead are always changing places (fr. 78)... not only to the souls that have become water, but to those that have become fire and are now guardian spirits."

"Plato’s contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles ...is ...that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many, and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by turns."

"[T]he absence of anything to show that Herakleitos spoke of a general ... becomes more patent when we turn to the few fragments which are supposed to prove it. The favourite is fr. 24, where... Fire was Want and Surfeit. [I]t has a perfectly intelligible meaning on our interpretation... confirmed by fr. 36. [I]t seems... artificial to understand the Surfeit as referring to the fact that fire has burnt everything else up, and... more so to interpret Want as meaning... fire... has turned into a world. The next is fr. 26 where... fire... will judge and convict all things. There is nothing... to suggest... fire will judge... at once rather than in turn, and... the advance of fire and water... we have seen... is... limited... These appear to be the only passages... the Stoics and the Christian apologists could discover, and... cannot bear the weight of their conclusion... [T]here was certainly nothing more definite to be found."

"It is much easier to find fragments which are on the face of them inconsistent with a general ."

"[W]hen anything becomes fire, something... equal... must cease to be fire, if the "exchange" is... just... and... we are assured by... the Erinyes (fr. 29)... that the sun does not take more than he gives. Of course there is... variation; but... strictly confined within limits, and is compensated in the long run by a variation in the other direction."

"[In] fr. 43... Herakleitos blames Homer for desiring the cessation of strife... The cessation of strife would mean that all things should take the upward or downward path... and cease to “run in opposite directions” If they all took the upward path, we should have a general conflagration."

"[I]n fr. 20 it is this world, and not merely the "ever-living fire," which is... eternal; and... its eternity depends upon... always kindling and always going out in the same "measures"... [i.e.,] encroachment in one direction is compensated by... encroachment in the other."

"[M]an, like the heavenly bodies, oscillates between fire and water; and that is... what Herakleitos taught."

"[N]either fire nor water can prevail completely... The whole process depends... on the fact that Surfeit is... Want... [i.e.,] an advance of fire increases the moist exhalation, while an advance of water deprives the fire of the power to cause evaporation. The conflagration... would destroy the opposite tension on which the rise of a new world depends, and... motion would become impossible."

"We know from Philo that Herakleitos supported his theory of the attainment of harmony through strife... There is... agreement between a passage of this kind in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise... The Kosmos, and the Hippokratean work... [B]oth drew from... Herakleitos... made practically certain by the fact that this agreement extends... to the Letters of Herakleitos, which, though spurious, were... composed by some one who had access to the original work."

"The argument was that men... act just in the same way as Nature, and it is therefore surprising that they do not recognise the laws by which she works."

"The painter produces his harmonious effects by the contrast of colours, the musician by that of high and low notes. "If one were to make all things alike, there would be no delight in them." There are many similar examples in the Hippokratean tract, some... come from Herakleitos; but it is not easy to separate them..."

"[A] number of Herakleitean fragments... form a class by themselves, and are among the most striking... Their common characteristic... they assert... the identity of... things... usually regarded as opposites."

"Herakleitos meant to say, not that day was night or that night was day, but that they were two sides of the same process, namely, the oscillation of the "measures" of fire and water, and... neither would be possible without the other."

"Any explanation... of night will... be an explanation of day, and vice versa; for it will be an account of that which is common... manifests itself now as one and now as the other. ...[B]ecause it has manifested... in the one form... it must next appear in the other... [as] required by the law of compensation or Justice."

"This is only a particular application of the universal principle that the primary fire is one even in its division. It itself is, even in its unity, both surfeit and want, war and peace (fr. 36)."

"[T]he "satiety" which makes fire pass into other forms, which makes it seek "rest in change" (frs. 82, 83), and "hide itself" (fr. 10) in the "hidden attunement" of opposition, is only one side of the process. The other is the "want" which leads it to consume the bright vapour as fuel. The upward path is nothing without the downward (fr. 69). If either were to cease, the other would cease... and the world would disappear; for it takes both to make... stable reality."

"All other utterances of the kind are to be explained in the same way."

"If there were no cold, there would be no heat; for a thing can only grow warm if... it is already cold."

"[T]he same thing applies to the opposition of wet and dry (fr. 39)."

"These... are... the two primary oppositions of Anaximander, and Herakleitos is showing that the war... is really peace, for it is the common element in them (fr. 62) which appears as strife, and that... strife is justice, and not, as Anaximander had taught, an injustice... they commit one against the other, and which must be expiated by a reabsorption of both in their common ground."

"The strife itself is the common ground (fr. 62), and is eternal."

"The most startling of these sayings is that which affirms that good and evil are the same (fr. 57). This does not mean in the least... that good is evil or that evil is good, but... that they are the two inseparable halves of one and the same thing."

"A thing can become good only in so far as it is already evil, and evil only in so far as it is already good... everything depends on the contrast."

"Herakleitos is not a believer in absolute relativity. The process of the world is not merely a circle, but an "upward and downward path.""

"At the upper end, where the two paths meet, we have the pure fire, in which, as there is no separation, there is no relativity."

"[W]hile to man some things are evil and some things are good, all things are good to God (fr.61). ...[B]y God ...Herakleitos meant fire. He also calls it the "one wise," and perhaps said... it "knows all things." ...[H]e meant to say ...in it the opposition and relativity which are universal in the world disappear. ...[T]o this ...frs. 96, 97, and 98 refer."

"Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway."

"At first he only used to be kidding when he called my stuff bourgeois, and I didn't give a damn — it was sort of funny, in fact. Then, after a while, you could tell he wasn't kidding any more. The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs — if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do."

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."