Quotes About Thales

Thales was the first thinker to try to account for the nature of the world without appealing to the wills and whims of anthropomorphic, Homerian gods. Rather, he sought to explain the many diverse phenomena he observed by appealing to a common, underlying principle, an idea that is still germane to modern scientific method.

From the beginning philosophy sought for The order behind the disorder                Thales sipped cheap wine                And in this did divine: "Why it's nothing at all but pure water!

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

From the beginning philosophy sought for The order behind the disorder Thales sipped cheap wine And in this did divine: "Why it's nothing at all but pure water!"

The belief in supernatural forces remains to this day a yoke on the neck of humanity, but at least Thales made it possible, for those of us who wish it, to be free of that yoke.

Thales said there was no difference between life and death. Why, then, said some one to him, do not you die? Because, said he, it does make no difference.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

Anaximander (ca. 610 BC–ca. 546 BC), a friend and possibly a student of Thales, argued that since human infants are helpless at birth, if the first human had somehow appeared on earth as an infant, it would not have survived. In what may have been humanity's first inkling of evolution

He thought that when he had healed sufficiently, and withdrawn from the capital, he might write the magus a letter and open a correspondence on Euclid, or Thales, or the new idea from the north, that the sun and not the Earth might be the centre of the universe.

Unfortunately, string theory has not yet led to any predictions that can be tested experimentally, and as a result theorists (at least most of us) are keeping an open mind as to whether the theory actually applies to the real world. It is this insistence on verification that we most miss in all the poetic students of nature, from Thales to Plato.

There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian.

Thales, Yunan'?n yedi bilgesinden biri, (ki ya?l? bir kad?n onunla dalga geçmi?ti; gö?ü ve y?ld?zlar? izlerken bir çukura dü?mü?; annesi onu gençken "çok erken", ya?lan?nca da "i? i?ten geçti" diyerek evlendirmemi?ti), suyun tüm canl?lar?n kayna?? oldu?unu ve hayat?n ?l?k çamur ile okyanus zeminindeki s?z?nt?lardan olu?tu?unu dü?ünmü?tü.

Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher-scientist. His theory that the world had developed from one element (water) was just the beginning. This idea, once conceived, was quickly developed by Thales' pupils in Miletus – the philosophers known as the Milesian school. One of these was Anaximenes

Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970) and Greek Science after Aristotle (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973)

In its early days philosophy included science – which became known as 'natural philosophy'. Thales' thinking was scientific because it could provide evidence for its conclusions. And it was philosophy because it used reason to reach these conclusions: there was no appeal to the gods or mysterious metaphysical forces. The argument was conducted entirely within the realms of this world, from which evidence could be gathered to prove or disprove its conclusions.