Thales Quotes

We will know which stars to visit. Our descendants will then skim the light years, the children of Thales and Aristarchus, Leonardo and Einstein. ~ Carl Sagan

Anaximander, a friend and possibly a student of Thales, argued that since human infants are helpless at birth, if the first human had somehow appeared on earth as an infant, it would not have survived. In what may have been humanity's first inkling of evolution, people, Anaximander reasoned, must therefore have evolved from other animals whose young are hardier. ~ Stephen Hawking

Suretyship (Dogma) is the precursor of ruin. ~ Thales

Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light. ~ Thales

Place is the greatest thing, as it contains all things. ~ Thales

There is an important feature of modern science that is almost completely missing in all the thinkers I have mentioned, from Thales to Plato: none of them attempted to verify or even (aside perhaps from Zeno) seriously to justify their speculations. In ~ Steven Weinberg

What is it that is most beautiful? - The Universe; for it is the work of God. What is most powerful? - Necessity; because it triumphs over all things. What is most difficult? - To know one's self. What is most easy? - To give advice. What method must we take to lead a good life? - To do nothing we would condemn in others. What is necessary to happiness? - A sound body and a contented mind. ~ Thales

The belief in supernatural forces remains to this day a yoke on the neck of humanity, but at least Thales made it possible, for those of us who wish it, to be free of that yoke. ~ Victor J. Stenger

What man is happy? He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind, and a docile nature. ~ Thales

Thales said there was no difference between life and death. Why, then, said some one to him, do not you die? Because, said he, it does make no difference. ~ Diogenes Laertius

The past is certain, the future obscure. ~ Thales

Thales was asked what was very difficult; he said: To know one's self. ~ Diogenes Laertius

Necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules everything. ~ Thales

Many words are not proof of the wise man, because the sage only talk when it's needed, and the words are measured and corresponding with the need. ~ Thales

He thought that when he had healed sufficiently, and withdrawn from the capital, he might write the magus a letter and open a correspondence on Euclid, or Thales, or the new idea from the north, that the sun and not the Earth might be the centre of the universe. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

If there is neither excessive wealth nor immoderate poverty in a nation, then justice may be said to prevail. ~ Thales

As brightness is to rustiness, so labor excelleth idleness. ~ Thales

Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing. ~ Thales

Hope is the most universal of human possessions. ~ Thales

No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian. ~ Thales

Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick. ~ Thales

God is the most ancient of all things, for he had no birth. ~ Thales

The great sage Thales once put the general matter succinctly "Oh master," he was asked, "what is the most difficult thing to do?" "To know thyself", he replied. "And the easiest?" "To give advice to others. ~ Robert Trivers

I will be sufficiently rewarded if when telling it to others you will not claim the discovery as your own, but will say it was mine. ~ Thales

All things are from water and all things are resolved into water. ~ Thales

Who is happy? This is a person, who has a healthy body, is dowered with peace of mind and cultivates his talents. ~ Thales

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still. ~ Thales

We live not, in reality, on the summit of a solid earth but at the bottom of an ocean of air ~ Thales

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it. ~ Aristotle.

I feel grateful to the Milesian wench who, seeing the philosopher Thales continually spending his time in contemplation of the heavenly vault and always keeping his eyes raised upward, put something in his way to make him stumble, to warn him that it would be time to amuse his thoughts with things in the clouds when he had seen to those at his feet. Indeed she gave him or her good counsel, to look rather to himself than to the sky. - Michel de Montaigne ~ Benjamin Graham

Narcotic greens narcotic greens like reeling firmaments disclose in their appearing randomness the sweetest means that you or she or any wandering Thales might choose to be wonder-struck with at the moment when we die ~ Marianne Bluger