Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: The Immortal Principle was first called water by Thales. Anaximenes called it air. The Pythagoreans called it number and were thus the first to see the Immortal Principle as something nonmaterial. Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle. He said the world exists as a conflict and tension of opposites. He said there is a One and there is a Many and the One is the universal law which is immanent in all things. Anaxagoras was the first to identify the One as nous, meaning "mind."
Parmenides made it clear for the first time that the Immortal Principle, the One, Truth, God, is separate from appearance and from opinion, and the importance of this separation and its effect upon subsequent history cannot be overstated. It's here that the classic mind, for the first time, took leave of its romantic origins and said, "The Good and the True are not necessarily the same," and goes its separate way. Anaxagoras and Parmenides had a listener named Socrates who carried their ideas into full fruition.
“Be the first to say something obvious and achieve immortality.”
Sag etwas, das sich von selbst versteht, zum ersten Mal und du bist unsterblich.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 19.
Original
Sag etwas, das sich von selbst versteht, zum ersten Mal, und Du bist unsterblich.
Aphorismen. Aus: Schriften. Bd. 1, Berlin: Paetel. 1893. S. 3
Aphorismen
Variant: Sag etwas, das sich von selbst versteht, zum ersten Mal und du bist unsterblich.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 81
Austrian writer 1830–1916Related quotes
“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.”
The joke about immortality also appears in On Being Funny (1975)
In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine from April 9, 1987, Allen said "Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment."
Source: The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader (1993)
“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”
“And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives.”
Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Lines 375-376.
Source: Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work, 1966, p. 189
“Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.”