Heraclitus (c.535–c.475 BCE,) also spelled Heracleitus and Herakleitos, was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He is remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle of an orderly universe.
Born in the Ionian city of Ephesus, Anatolia, now Selçuk in Turkey, into one of the aristocratic families of Ephesus, Heraclitus rejected the political privileges for a life of a misanthropic recluse, living alone in the mountains, eating plants and grass. Little is known about his life—he was known throughout the ancient world as “the Obscure” (“skoteinos.”)
Heraclitus believed that the apparent, unchanging face of the universe veiled a dynamic balance wherein all things were continuously changing, but with opposites preserving the balance—health and disease, good and evil, hot and cold, for example. The fundamental substance uniting all things was fire.
Heraclitus is important as one of the first Greek philosophers to engage in the problem of knowledge, and he is certainly the first to lay emphasis on the importance of an understanding of the soul as a step toward understanding the world order.
The one book Heraclitus apparently wrote is lost. His philosophy survives in the short fragments quoted and attributed to him by later authors. These writings provided much of the theoretical foundation for Stoic philosophy.
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Nature loves to hide.
—Heraclitus
Much learning does not teach understanding.
—Heraclitus
Topics: Education, Learning, Understanding
Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.
—Heraclitus
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
—Heraclitus
There is nothing permanent except change.
—Heraclitus
Topics: Change
It is in changing that things find purpose.
—Heraclitus
Topics: Change
To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.
—Heraclitus
Topics: Boredom
Much knowledge of divine things is lost to us through want of faith.
—Heraclitus
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