Fragments surviving as quotations in later authors. Numbering follows Diels–Kranz. Translated by John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (3rd ed., 1920), public domain.

On the Logos

Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.

So we must follow the common, yet though my Word is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

On Flux and Opposites

You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.

We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.

Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is moist dries, and the parched is moistened.

The way up and the way down is one and the same.

It is the opposite which is good for us.

The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive.

And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.

It rests by changing.

Donkeys would rather have straw than gold.

On Fire and the Cosmos

This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.

All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares.

The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind.

It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things.

The sun is new every day.

The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out.

Fire in its advance will judge and convict all things.

On Wisdom and Character

The learning of many things teacheth not understanding; else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hekataios.

Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

Man’s character is his fate.

I have sought for myself.

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have barbarian souls.

It is hard to fight with one’s heart’s desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.

The dry soul is the wisest and best.

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.

Nature loves to hide.

On War, Justice, and Necessity

War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.

We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.

The people must fight for its law as for its walls.

Those who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is common to all, as a city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly.

Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.

Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.

The hidden attunement is better than the open.

On the Human Condition

Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child’s.

The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.

The Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.

The fairest cosmos is but a rubbish-heap piled up at random.

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man.

Greater deaths win greater portions.

Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle.

One is ten thousand to me, if he be the best.

The many do not take heed of such things as those they meet with, nor do they mark them when they are taught, though they think they do.

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