The Best Quotes of Parmenides part 1 of 2 | Ancient Greek Philosophers

Parmenides of Elea (/pɑːrˈmɛnɪdiːz ... ˈɛliə/; Greek: Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia (meaning "Great Greece," the term which Romans gave to Greek-populated coastal areas in Southern Italy). He is thought to have been in his prime (or "floruit") around 475 BC. Parmenides has been considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Zeno's paradoxes of motion were to defend Parmenides' view. Parmenides, authored a difficult metaphysical poem that has earned him a reputation as early Greek philosophy’s most profound and challenging thinker. His philosophical stance has typically been understood as at once extremely paradoxical and yet crucial for the broader development of Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics.

Parmenides's Quotes:

1. "It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again." "Gaze steadfastly at things which, though far away, are yet present to the mind."


2. "The mares that take me as far as my spirit reached me transported me when, as they led me, they brought me to the road, abundant in signs of the goddess."


3. "You can not recognize not being, you can not talk about him, because thought and being are the same thing."


4. "We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous."


5. "Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are — bar your thought from this road of inquiry."


6. "The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable."


7. "There is one story left, one road: that it is. And on this road there are very many signs that, being, is uncreated and imperishable, whole, unique, unwavering, and complete."


8. "You will know the ethereal nature and, also in the ether, all the signs and the destructive effects of the pure and bright torch of the sun and from where they have been generated."

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The Best Quotes of Parmenides:

Part 1

Part 2