Democritus Quotes on Knowledge
Democritus of Abdera (c. 460–370 BC), with his teacher Leucippus, founded the atomist tradition that the Epicureans would later inherit and extend. Reality consists, on the atomist account, of indivisible material particles (atoms) of various shapes and sizes moving in the infinite void; the apparent qualities of macroscopic objects — color, taste, sound — are by convention only, while atoms and the void alone exist in truth. The framework supplies one of the founding statements of philosophical materialism and the methodological program of explaining the manifest image of common experience in terms of an underlying scientific image — a program that, transformed through Galileo, Boyle, Newton, and the modern physical sciences, has organized the natural-scientific worldview of subsequent Western thought.
Quotes
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“By convention sweet, by convention bitter; by convention hot, by convention cold; in reality, atoms and void.”
Fragment 9 (preserved by Galen) -
Attributed to Democritus:
“It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new.”
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“Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.”
Freeman (1948) [ 1 ] , p. 161 | Variant: The good things of life are produced by learning with hard work; the bad are reaped of their own accord, without hard work. [ citation needed ] -
Attributed to Democritus:
“It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.”
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“δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτῶι τάδε· ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων ἀτόμους καὶ κενόν, τὰ δ'ἀλλα πάντα νενομίσθαι [δοξάζεσθαι]. ( Diogenes Laërtius , Democritus , Vol. IX, 44)”
Now his principal doctrines were these. That atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe; and that everything else existed only in opinion. (trans. Yonge 1853) | The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist. (trans. by Robert Drew Hicks 1925) | Often paraphrased as "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything els -
“Often paraphrased as "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.”
δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτῶι τάδε· ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων ἀτόμους καὶ κενόν, τὰ δ'ἀλλα πάντα νενομίσθαι [δοξάζεσθαι]. ( Diogenes Laërtius , Democritus , Vol. IX, 44) -
“νόμωι (γάρ φησι) γλυκὺ καὶ νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῆι δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, 9; Sext. Emp. adv. math. VII 135)”
Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948) [ 1 ] , p. 92. -
“We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it.”
Freeman (1948) [ 1 ] , p. 142 -
“Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.”
Freeman (1948) [ 1 ] , p. 149 | Variant: Medicine cures the diseases of the body; wisdom, on the other hand, relieves the soul of its sufferings. [ citation needed ]