Xenophanes
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes lived a life of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 and continuing to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Sicily. Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers. To judge from these, his elegiac and iambic poetry criticized and satirized a wide...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
ocean rain blow
The sea is the source of water and the source of wind; for neither would blasts of wind arise in the clouds and blow out from within them, except for the great sea, nor would the streams of rivers nor the rain-water in the sky exist but for the sea ; but the great sea is the begetter of clouds and winds and rivers.
earth soil becoming
For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth.
horse eye men
The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. “If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods' bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.
horse oxen atheism
If oxen and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate the gods in their own image.
truth honesty done
No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even know they had done so.
horse hands lions
If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands...
horse looks ifs
If horses had Gods, they would look like horses.
god effort mind
But without effort [God] sets in motion all things by mind and thought.
horse believe men
There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who bears no similarity to humans either in shape or thought... but humans believe that the gods are born like themselves, and that the gods wear clothes and have bodies like humans and speak in the same way... but if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with the hands and manufacture the things humans can make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and they would make the gods' bodies resemble those which each kind of animal had itself.
judging
It isn't right to judge strength as better than good wisdom.
gods men
Men create the gods in their own image.