1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Xenophanes

Xenophanes Quotes

Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes lived a life of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 and continuing to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Sicily. Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers. To judge from these, his elegiac and iambic poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including Homer and Hesiod, the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the Greeks' veneration of athleticism. He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, and never die while the Greek kind of songs survives." Wikipedia  

✵ 570 BC – 475 BC
Xenophanes photo
Xenophanes: 5 quotes0 likes

Famous Xenophanes Quotes

“But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.”

Xenophanes

Fragment 15 (D-K)

“Ethiopians say that their gods are snubnosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired.”

Xenophanes

Fragment 16 (D-K)

“Mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are,
and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form.”

Xenophanes

Diels-Kranz (D-K), fragment 14

“For all things are from the earth and to the earth all things come in the end.”

Xenophanes

Fragment 27, as quoted in Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments, trans. J. H. Lesher (University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 124

“There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor in thought.”

Xenophanes

Fragment 23, as quoted in Notes on Greek Philosophy by Anthony Preus (Global Academic Publishing, 1996), p. 10

Similar authors

Antisthenes photo
Antisthenes24
Greek philosopher None
Plato photo
Plato80
Classical Greek philosopher None
Socrates photo
Socrates168
classical Greek Athenian philosopher None
Heraclitus photo
Heraclitus46
pre-Socratic Greek philosopher None
Protagoras photo
Protagoras6
pre-Socratic Greek philosopher None
Zhuangzi photo
Zhuangzi38
classic Chinese philosopher None
Thales photo
Thales9
ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician None
Pythagoras photo
Pythagoras121
ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher None
Epicurus photo
Epicurus30
ancient Greek philosopher None
Zeno of Citium photo
Zeno of Citium9
ancient Greek philosopher None