Gorgias 483 BC – 375 BC
Gorgias of Leontini was a Greek Sophist and rhetorician who lived to a great age, traveling between Sicily and Athens as a celebrated public speaker. His treatise On Non-Being argued in turn that nothing exists, that if anything did exist it could not be known, and that even if it could be known, it could not be communicated. The Encomium of Helen and the Defense of Palamedes display the rhetorical brilliance for which he was famous, exhibiting argument as a power as much as a path to truth. Plato made him the foil of a major dialogue on rhetoric and justice.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Sophism, Ancient Greek
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Gorgias:
“Nothing exists. If anything did exist, it could not be known. If anything could be known, it could not be communicated to others.”
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Attributed to Gorgias:
“Speech is a powerful master, which by means of the smallest and most invisible body accomplishes the most divine things.”
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Attributed to Gorgias:
“Being is unrecognizable, even if it should exist.”
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Attributed to Gorgias:
“Tragedy is a deception in which the deceiver is more honest than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is wiser than the non-deceived.”
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Attributed to Gorgias:
“All who have persuaded people of things, by molding a false speech, have done wrong.”