Zeno of Elea

Philosopher Ancient Greek 490 – 430

Created paradoxes about motion and the nature of reality.

373 quotes

"Reality is one, eternal, unchanging, and indivisible—all else is human fabrication."
Truth
"The paradox of motion teaches us that our intuitions about space may be profoundly mistaken."
Wisdom
"Being cannot come to be, for it would have to come from non-being, which does not exist."
Philosophy
"The faster runner cannot overtake the slower runner if the world is as our senses portray it."
Science
"What we call reality may be the subjective organization of pure paradox."
Truth
"The existence of the many is logically impossible; therefore, only the one can be."
Philosophy
"Time itself is perhaps the great illusion that allows us to believe in change and motion."
Time
"To understand being, we must abandon our reliance on sensory experience."
Knowledge
"The division of anything into parts leads inevitably to logical absurdity."
Wisdom
"Motion and change are the deceptions that hide the true nature of eternal being."
Truth
"The world of becoming that we experience is perhaps only the shadow of the world of being."
Philosophy
"If the arrow is always in a place equal to itself, how can it ever move?"
Time
"The infinite regress of spatial division demonstrates that infinite size and infinite smallness are paradoxically combined."
Science
"What appears to us as plurality is merely the confused perception of an absolute unity."
Wisdom
"The very concept of becoming implies a logical contradiction that no metaphysics can resolve."
Philosophy
"To claim something is true, we must be able to prove it does not lead to self-contradiction."
Truth
"The moving object at each instant of time is stationary; therefore, nothing ever moves."
Time
"Being alone exists; multiplicity is the phantom that haunts human thought."
Knowledge
"The paradoxes are not puzzles to be solved, but truths to be recognized."
Wisdom
"If things truly are many, each must be infinite in quantity and infinite in size."
Philosophy
"The nature of space and the nature of time may fundamentally preclude the reality of motion."
Science
"Being is; not-being is not; becoming is impossible and unintelligible."
Truth
"What we perceive as change is the limitation of our understanding, not the nature of reality."
Wisdom
"The infinite divisibility of space and time reveals that motion is logically incoherent."
Philosophy
"Reality permits no becoming, no perishing, no change—only eternal, unchanging being."
Truth
"The many cannot exist because any plurality contradicts itself upon examination."
Knowledge
"The apparent flow of time rests upon assumptions about causality that may be unfounded."
Time
"To understand the true nature of things, abandon the senses and trust only reason."
Wisdom
"If motion occurs, there must be an instant when the moving object is between positions—yet no such instant can exist."
Philosophy
"Being is singular, eternal, whole, and immovable—this alone is truth."
Truth