Xenophanes 570 BC – 475 BC
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher and poet who traveled widely after leaving Ionia and lived to a great age. He produced the earliest sustained critique of anthropomorphic religion, arguing that human beings imagine the gods in their own image. In its place he proposed a single, unmoving, all-perceiving deity unlike mortals in body or in mind. He also articulated a skeptical epistemology, distinguishing certain knowledge from the conjectural belief available to human beings. His fragments influenced both the Eleatic school and later Hellenistic skepticism.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Pre-Socratic, Ancient Greek
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Xenophanes:
“If oxen and horses or lions had hands and could draw with their hands, horses would draw the figures of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen.”
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Attributed to Xenophanes:
“Mortals suppose that the gods are born, have clothes and voices and shapes like their own.”
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Attributed to Xenophanes:
“The Ethiopians say their gods are flat-nosed and dark; the Thracians, that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.”
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Attributed to Xenophanes:
“One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way like mortals in body or in mind.”
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Attributed to Xenophanes:
“No man knows or ever will know the truth about the gods and about everything I speak of; for even if one chanced to say the complete truth, yet oneself knows it not; but seeming is wrought over all things.”