Top 200 Heraclitus Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “What we have caught and what we have killed we have left behind, but what has escaped us we bring with us.”

— Heraclitus

102. “Ethos anthropoi daimon – a man’s character is his fate.”

— Heraclitus

103. “The only constant is change. Unless you get a small group of neighbors together to stop it.”

— Heraclitus

104. “Knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity.”

— Heraclitus

105. “If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice.”

— Heraclitus

106. “A dry soul is wisest and best.”

— Heraclitus

107. “The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.”

— Heraclitus

108. “Those unmindful when they hear, for all they make of their intelligence, may be regarded as the walking dead.”

— Heraclitus

109. “The river where you set your foot just now is gone-those waters give way to this, now this.”

— Heraclitus

110. “Where there is no strife there is decay: ‘The mixture which is not shaken decomposes.’”

— Heraclitus

111. “Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.”

— Heraclitus

112. “Knowledge is not intelligence.”

— Heraclitus

113. “Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.”

— Heraclitus

114. “Life is a child moving counters in a game.”

— Heraclitus

115. “There is but one world common for those who are awake, but when men are asleep, each turns away into a world of his own.”

— Heraclitus

116. “Things keep their secrets.”

— Heraclitus

117. “For those who are awake, the Cosmos is One.”

— Heraclitus

118. “To God all things are beautiful and good and just.”

— Heraclitus

119. “The most beautiful arrangement is a pile of things poured out at random.”

— Heraclitus

120. “The beginning is the end.”

— Heraclitus

121. “The results are in great need greater ambition.”

— Heraclitus

122. “Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.”

— Heraclitus

123. “Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”

— Heraclitus

124. “Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within.”

— Heraclitus

125. “The outcomes are in incredible need more prominent desire.”

— Heraclitus

126. “Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find it, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.”

— Heraclitus

127. “The phases of fire are craving and satiety.”

— Heraclitus

128. “Greater dooms win greater destinies.”

— Heraclitus

129. “Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth.”

— Heraclitus

130. “There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of wares for gold and of gold for wares.”

— Heraclitus

131. “The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign.”

— Heraclitus

132. “The most beautiful ape is ugly when compared to a human. The wisest human will seem like an ape when compared to a god with respect to wisdom, beauty, and everything else.”

— Heraclitus

133. “It is hard to contend against one’s heart’s desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul.”

— Heraclitus

134. “Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.”

— Heraclitus

135. “Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.”

— Heraclitus

136. “The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.”

— Heraclitus

137. “May you have plenty of wealth, you men of Ephesus, in order that you may be punished for your evil ways.”

— Heraclitus

138. “Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeated all things.”

— Heraclitus

139. “We circle in the night and we are devoured by fire.”

— Heraclitus

140. “The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.”

— Heraclitus

141. “He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.”

— Heraclitus

142. “The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.”

— Heraclitus

143. “It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.”

— Heraclitus

144. “One man is worth thousand if he is extraordinary.”

— Heraclitus

145. “A fool is excited by every word.”

— Heraclitus

146. “Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.”

— Heraclitus

147. “Asses prefer garbage to gold.”

— Heraclitus

148. “The fairest harmony springs from discord.”

— Heraclitus

149. “No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.”

— Heraclitus

150. “What is divine escapes men’s notice because of their incredulity.”

— Heraclitus