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Parmenides Quotes

Parmenides of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia . He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy.

The single known work by Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, only fragments of which survive. In it, Parmenides prescribes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" , he explains how reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. This is generally considered one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of being, and has been contrasted with Heraclitus's statement that "No man ever steps into the same river twice" as one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of becoming.

Parmenides and Heraclitus are therefore generally considered two of the founders of ontology. Scholars have generally believed that either Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus, or Heraclitus to Parmenides, though opinion on who was responding to whom changed over the course of the 20th century. In "the way of opinion", Parmenides explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful. He has been considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology.

✵ 501 BC – 470 BC
Parmenides photo
Parmenides: 7 quotes8 likes

Famous Parmenides Quotes

“It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again.”

Parmenides

Frag. B 5, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Parmenides, 708

“For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.”

Parmenides

Frag. B 3, quoted by Plotinus, Enneads V, i.8

“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.”

Parmenides

Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345

“You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.”

Parmenides

Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3; Simplicius, Commentary on the Heavens, 557-8; Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345

“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.”

Parmenides

Frag. B 8.1-4, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 144

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

Parmenides

Frag. B 7.1-2, quoted by Plato, Sophist, 237a

“Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.”

Parmenides

Frag. B 7.3-8.1, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3

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