Philosophers From Greece

"[Thales] first went to Egypt and hence introduced this study [geometry] into Greece. He discovered many propositions himself, and instructed his successors in the principles underlying many others, his method of attack being in some cases more general [i.e. more theoretical or scientific], in others more empirical [...more in the nature of simple inspection or observation]."

"Thales' statement was the first expression of... a fundamental substance, of which all other things were transient forms. The word "substance"... was... not interpreted in the purely material sense ...Aristotle ascribes to Thales also ...All things are full of gods. ...[We can] imagine ...Thales took his view ...from meteorological considerations. ...[W]ater can take the most various shapes... ice and snow... vapor, and... clouds. It seems to turn into earth where the rivers form their delta, and it can spring from the earth. Water is the condition for life. Therefore... [as] a fundamental substance, it was natural to think of water first."

"[W]ith Thales... Aristotle ascribes the statement: "Water is the material cause of all things." This... expresses, as Nietzsche... pointed out, three fundamental ideas of philosophy. First, ...the material cause of all things; second, ...that this ...be answered in conformity with reason, without ...myths or mysticism; third, ...that ...it must be possible to reduce everything to one principle."

"Since Alyattes would not give up the Scythians to Cyaxares at his demand, there was war [ Battle of Halys ] between the Lydians and the Medes for five years; each won many victories over the other, and once they fought a battle by night. They were still warring with equal success, when it happened, at an encounter which occurred in the sixth year, that during the battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year in which the change did indeed happen."

"It has been asserted that metaphysical speculation is a thing of the past and that physical science has extirpated it. The discussion of the categories of existence, however, does not appear to be in danger of coming to an end in our time, and the exercise of speculation continues as fascinating to every fresh mind as it was in the days of Thales."

"Thales the teacher produced the first geometers, even as Thales the thinker founded the first geometry worthy of the name."

"It seems probable that the early Greeks were largely indebted to the Phoenicians for their knowledge of practical arithmetic or the art of calculation, and perhaps also learnt from them a few properties of numbers. It may be worthy of note that Pythagoras was a Phoenician; and according to Herodotus, but this is more doubtful, Thales was also of that race."

"Thales had a motto — sophotaton chronos aneuriskei gar panta — which means time is wisest because it discovers everything. We still live by that motto — we mark the time and aid the discoveries by keeping the soul lines intact."

"It has fallen to the lot of one people, the ancient Greeks, to endow human thought with two outlooks on the universe neither of which has blurred appreciably in more than two thousand years. ...The first was the explicit recognition that proof by deductive reasoning offers a foundation for the structure of number and form. The second was the daring conjecture that nature can be understood by human beings through mathematics, and that mathematics is the language most adequate for idealizing the complexity of nature into appreciable simplicity. Both are attributed by persistent Greek tradition to Pythagoras in the sixth century before Christ. ...there is an equally persistent tradition that it was Thales... who first proved a theorem in geometry. But there seems to be no claim that Thales... proposed the inerrant tactic of definitions, postulates, deductive proof, theorem as a universal method in mathematics. ...in attributing any specific advance to Pythagoras himself, it must be remembered that the Pythagorean brotherhood was one of the world's earliest unpriestly cooperative scientific societies, if not the first, and that its members assigned the common work of all by mutual consent to their master."

"Nothing is more ancient than God, for He was never created; nothing more beautiful than the world, it is the work of that same God; nothing is more active than thought, for it flies over the whole universe; nothing is stronger than necessity, for all must submit to it."

"Thales asserted Water to be the principle of things. For he saw that matter was principally dispensed in moisture, and moisture in water; and it seemed proper to make that the principle of things, in which the virtues and powers of beings, and especially the elements of their generations and restorations, were chiefly found. He saw that the breeding of animals is in moisture ; that the seeds and kernels of plants (as long as they are productive and fresh), are likewise soft and tender; that metals also melt and become fluid, and are as it were concrete juices of the earth, or rather a kind of mineral waters; that the earth itself is fertilised and revived by showers or irrigation, and that earth and mud seem nothing else than the lees and sediment of water; that air most plainly is but the exhalation and expansion of water; nay, that even fire itself cannot be lighted, nor kept in and fed, except with moisture and by means of moisture. He saw, too, that the fatness which belongs to moisture, and which is the support and life of flame and fire, seems a kind of ripeness and concoction of the water."

"It was not 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 fire is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years b.c.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all these philosophers, by showing that though each was right, the system of none was complete."

"Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still."

"Water is the first principle of everything."

"Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick."

"Do not ask who started it. Finish it"

"With regard to the Pythagorean theorem my conjecture is that... it was known to Thales. ...the hypotenuse theorem is a direct consequence of the principle of similitude, and... Thales was fully conversant with the theory of similar triangles."

"The more one studies the period of Thales—the more one compares the knowledge he bequeathed to prosterity with the one he had found when he began his work—the more does his mathematical stature grow, until one is impelled to range Thales with such figures as Archimedes, Fermat, Newton, Gauss and Poincaré."

"Speak no ill of a friend, nor even of an enemy."

"Even the Gods cannot strive against necessity."

"Power shows the man."

"Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him."

"Forgiveness is better than revenge."

"Do not say before hand what you are going to do; for if you fail, you will be laughed at."

"Whatever you do, do it well."

"Do not reproach a man with his misfortunes, fearing lest Nemesis may overtake you."

"Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and industry."

"καιρὸν γνῶθι"

"Whatever you rebuke your neighbor for, do not do it yourself."

"For all things are from the earth and to the earth all things come in the end."

"Αἰθίοπές τε <θεοὺς σφετέρους> σιμοὺς μέλανάς τε Θρῇκἐς τε γλαυκοὺς καὶ πυρρούς <φασι πέλεσθαι>."

"There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor in thought."

"ἀλλ᾽οἱ βροτοὶ δοκέουσι γεννᾶσθαι θεοὺς, τὴν σφετέρην δ᾽ἐσθῆτα ἔχειν φωνήν τε δέμας τε."

"ἀλλ᾽ εἰ χεῖρας ἔχον βόες <ἵπποι τ᾽> ἠὲ λέοντες ἢ γράψαι χείρεσσι καὶ ἔργα τελεῖν ἅπερ ἄνδρες, ἵπποι μέν θ᾽ ἵπποισι βόες δέ τε βουσὶν ὁμοίας καί <κε> θεῶν ἰδέας ἔγραφον καὶ σώματ᾽ ἐποίουν τοιαῦθ᾽ οἷόν περ καὐτοὶ δέμας εἶχον <ἕκαστοι>."

"A view of the unseemly actions of drunken men is the most effectual dissuasive from wine."

"He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest."

"These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth."

"The forum [is] an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously."

"Under which head do you class those who are at sea?"

"My country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country."

"Better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing."

"A vine bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance."

"Arrian mentions with admiration that every Indian is free. With them, as with the Lacedemonians, he says, no native can be a slave; but unlike the Lacedemonians, they keep no other people in servitude."

"They (Indians) are remarkably brave, and superior in war to all Asiatics; they are remarkable for integrity; they are so reasonable as seldom to have recourse to law suits, and so honest as to require neither locks to their doors nor writings to bind their agreements. They are in the highest degree truthful."

"From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established... and another to 300 years, and another to 120 years. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked... The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations."

"Heracles... who is currently reported to have come as a stranger into the country is said to have been in reality a native of India. This Heracles is held in especial honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora, and through whose country flows a navigable river called the Jobares. But the dress which this Heracles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of the Thracian Heracles, as the Indians themselves admit. It is further said that he had a numerous progeny of male children born to him in India (for, like his Theban namesake, he married many wives) but that he had only one daughter. The name of this child was Pāndaia, and the land in which she was born and with the sovereignty of which Heracles entrusted her was called after her name Pāndaia."

"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; … [and] I have been appointed leader of the Greeks …"

"This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave."

"We learn from a passage in Strabo, that it was a dogma of the Gaulish Druids that the universe was immortal, but destined to survive catastrophes both of fire and water. That this doctrine was communicated to them from the East, with much of their learning, cannot be doubted."

"He also buried the Persian commanders and the Greek mercenaries who were killed fighting on the side of the enemy. But as many of them as he took prisoners he bound in fetters and sent them away to Macedonia to till the soil, because, though they were Greeks, they were fighting against Greece on behalf of the foreigners in opposition to the decrees which the Greeks had made in their federal council. To Athens also he sent 300 suits of Persian armour to be hung up in the Acropolis as a votive offering to Athena, and ordered this inscription to be fixed over them, "Alexander, son of Philip, and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians, present this offering from the spoils taken from the foreigners inhabiting Asia"