He was a Greek philosophically-minded poet, theologian, social and religious critic and the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. He criticised the stories about the gods told by the poets, and he defended a novel conception of the divine nature. He was a critic of the writings of Homer and Hesiod, attacking their depiction of the gods as anthropomorphic polytheism.
He offered his own monotheistic account of divinity, according to which there was just one god, wholly different from human beings, having a body but motionless.
(c. 570-478 BC)
– Xenophanes Quotes –
No human being will ever know the Truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even known they had done so.
~ Xenophanes
Gods of course did not reveal everything to mortals from the beginning, but in time by searching they improve their discoveries.
~ Xenophanes
…for all things are from the earth and to the earth all things come in the end.
~ Xenophanes
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.
~ Xenophanes
God is one, greatest of gods and men, not like mortals in body or thought.
~ Xenophanes
But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the work that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.
~ Xenophanes
But first glad-hearted men must hymn the god with reverent words and pure speech.
~ Xenophanes
Men create the gods in their own image.
~ Xenophanes
If horses or oxen or lions had hands and could produce works of art, they too would represent the gods after their own fashion.
~ Xenophanes
Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is blameworthy and disgraceful among humans theft and adultery and mutual trickery… but humans suppose that gods have been born and wear clothes like theirs and have voice and body.
~ Xenophanes
It takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.
~ Xenophanes
No human being will ever know the Truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even known they had done so.
~ Xenophanes
In the beginning the gods did not at all reveal all things clearly to mortals, but by searching men in the course of time find them out better.
~ Xenophanes
And so no man has seen anything clearly nor will anyone know about the gods and what I say about everything, for if one should by chance speak about what has come to pass even as it is, still he himself does not know, but opinion is stretched over all.
~ Xenophanes
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable.
~ Xenophanes
This upper limit, of earth at our feet is visible and touches the air, but below it reaches to infinity.
~ Xenophanes
… we are all sprung from earth and water.
~ Xenophanes
