Protagoras

Protagoras ( c. 485 BC - c. 410 BC) was one of the earliest of the Greek Sophists, the thinker who was born at Abdera, and who flourished around 440 BC. He taught at Athens, from which he was banished as a blasphemer, as having called in question the existence of the gods. Protagoras taught that man was the measure of all things, of those that exist, that they are; and of those things that do not exist, that they are not; and that there is nothing absolute, that all is an affair of subjective conception.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
• Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
• Of the Gods I know nothing, whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form. Many things stand in the way of knowledge - the obscurity of the subject, the brevity of human life.

- Quoted in Lives of Eminent philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

• Man is the measure of all things, of things that they are, of things that are not, that they are not.

- Quoted in Lives of Eminent philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

• Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
• The more pleasures a man captures in this life, the deeper the hole in his soul.
• Know thyself.
• There are two sides to every question.
• Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

- Quoted in Lives of Eminent philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

• One cannot step twice into the same river.
• The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.

- Quoted in Protagoras by Plato

• The unexamined life is not worth living.
• No intelligent man believes that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds; they are well aware that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly.
• An unjust man is always in a state of disorder and impiety.
• He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
• Let us hold our discussion together in our own persons, making trial of the truth and of ourselves.
• Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
• The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
• There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
• To find yourself, think for yourself.
• Well begun is half done.
• An empty vessel makes the loudest sound.
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
• The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
• The mind is everything. What you think you become.
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
• Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.
• The noblest question in the world is, 'What good may I do in it?'
• Well done is better than well said.

Herodotus