9 ideas
21336 | Crates lived in poverty, and treated his whole life as a joke [Crates of Thebes, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Crates, with his bag and threadbare cloak, spent his whole life laughing and joking as though he were on holiday. | |
From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Plutarch - 30: Quiet of Mind 266e | |
A reaction: Crates sounds a little less alarming than Diogenes, while living a similar life. Was Crates the first ancestor of post-modernism? |
1767 | Everyone should study philosophy until they see all people in the same light [Crates of Thebes, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: A man should study philosophy up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light. | |
From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Cr.9 | |
A reaction: This seems to reject Aristote's idea that some people are clearly superior to others. |
411 | If we succeed in speaking the truth, we cannot know we have done it [Xenophanes] |
Full Idea: No man has seen certain truth, and no man will ever know about the gods and other things I mentioned; for if he succeeds in saying what is fully true, he himself is unaware of it; opinion is fixed by fate on all things. | |
From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B34), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 7.49.4 |
412 | If God had not created honey, men would say figs are sweeter [Xenophanes] |
Full Idea: If God had not created yellow honey, men would say that figs were sweeter. | |
From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B38), quoted by Herodian - On Peculiar Speech 41.5 |
23261 | A people, not government, creates a constitution, which is essential for legitimacy [Paine] |
Full Idea: A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right. | |
From: Thomas Paine (Rights of Man [1792], Ch.7), quoted by A.C. Grayling - The Good State 5 | |
A reaction: A constitution looks like the ultimate focus of a social contract (though Greeks had them long ago). It is hard to say why a government should consider itself to be sovereign if it hasn't got it in writing. |
1640 | The basic Eleatic belief was that all things are one [Xenophanes, by Plato] |
Full Idea: The Eleatic tribe, which had its beginnings from Xenophanes and still earlier, proceed on the grounds that all things so-called are one. | |
From: report of Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE]) by Plato - The Sophist 242d |
3055 | Xenophanes said the essence of God was spherical and utterly inhuman [Xenophanes, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Xenophanes taught that the essence of God was of a spherical form, in no respect resembling man. | |
From: report of Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.2.3 |
408 | Ethiopian gods have black hair, and Thracian gods have red hair [Xenophanes] |
Full Idea: Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair. | |
From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B16), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 7.22.1 |
407 | Mortals believe gods are born, and have voices and clothes just like mortals [Xenophanes] |
Full Idea: Mortals believe the gods to be created by birth, and to have raiment, voice and body like mortals'. | |
From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B14), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 5.109.2 |