Heraclitus

Much learning does not teach understanding. I have searched through myself. Most men are bad. Eyes and ears are poor witnesses when the soul is barbarous.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Change is the only constant — all things are in flux, fire transforms all.

The path up and the path down are the same path. Opposition brings concord; out of discord comes the fairest harmony. It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant.

You cannot step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and you are not the same man. Everything flows — panta rhei. The apparent stability of the world is an illusion: what seems fixed is in constant motion, what seems one is many, what seems at rest is struggling to move. Opposition is the mother of all things. I do not claim this is...

The road up and the road down are one and the same. Opposites coincide. The cold warms, the warm cools; the wet dries, the dry moistens. Everything becomes its opposite; everything is connected to what it opposes. The Logos — the principle of reason that governs all things — is not accessible to most men, because most men prefer the familiar to the true....

Wisdom is one thing: to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things. The logos is not my invention; it was here before I arrived, and it will be here when men have stopped arguing about whether it exists.

Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to men if they have souls that do not understand their language. The many hear thunder and see lightning but do not hear the logos or see the unity beneath the storm. Perception is the door; understanding is what lies behind it.

War is the father of all and the king of all. Some it has shown as gods, others as men; some it has made slaves, others free. I do not celebrate war. I observe that nothing in the world is ever resolved by the disappearance of its tensions.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. A bow is bent in one direction while the string pulls in another — the tension between them is what gives the arrow its flight. Remove the opposition and you remove the power.

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own. A man who sleeps through his life builds his own cosmos and calls it wisdom. I prefer the discomfort of the world we share.

Although the logos is common to all, most people live as if they had a private understanding of their own. I have said what I have said and been ignored, which confirms everything I have said about the relationship between truth and the people's willingness to receive it.

Donkeys would rather have straw than gold. Men prefer what delights their senses over what reveals the structure of things. I cannot make the logos palatable. I can only state it and wait for those whose ears are ready.