Zeno of Elea Quotes
Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Parmenides. He defended his teacher's claim that reality is one and unchanging by constructing a series of paradoxes intended to show that motion, plurality, and divisibility lead to contradiction. The quotes below are attributed to Zeno of Elea, organized by topic.
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Zeno of Elea on Knowledge
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“The truth is, that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one . My answer is addressed to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being o”
As quoted in Parmenides by Plato , a portrayal of a discussion which begins between Socrates and Zeno, and then primarily Parmenides ; as translated by Benjamin Jowett , Parmenides (1871)
Zeno of Elea on Nature
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Attributed to Zeno of Elea:
“What is in motion moves neither in the place in which it is, nor in one in which it is not.”
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Attributed to Zeno of Elea:
“If everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum.”
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Attributed to Zeno of Elea:
“If there are many things, they are both small and great: so small as to have no magnitude, so great as to be infinite.”
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Attributed to Zeno of Elea:
“The flying arrow is at rest.”
Zeno of Elea on Time
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“My writing is an answer to the partisans of the many and it returns their attack with interest, with a view to showing that the hypothesis of the many, if examined sufficiently in detail, leads to even more ridiculous results than the hypothesis of the One. As translated in A History of Philosophy , Vol. I : Greece and Rome (1953) by Frederick Charles Copleston.”
The truth is, that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one . My answer is addressed to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being o
Zeno of Elea on Truth
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Attributed to Zeno of Elea:
“That which, being added to another, does not make it greater, and being taken away from another does not make it less, is nothing.”