Democritus Quotes

Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.

By convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color, but in reality atoms and void.

Many much-learned men have no intelligence.

In fact we do not know anything infallibly, but only that which changes according to the condition of our body and of the [influences] that reach and impinge upon it.

Those who have a well-ordered character lead also a well-ordered life.

He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.

If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.

To a wise man, the whole earth is open, because the country of a virtuous soul is the entire universe.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

One should emulate works and deeds of virtue, not arguments about it.

Everything is lost when the bad serve as an example and the good as a mocker.

The pleasures that give most joy are the ones that most rarely come.

Not from fear but from a sense of duty refrain from your sins.

My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.

One man means as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man.