Xenophanes Quotes

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.

God is one, greatest of gods and men, not like mortals in body or thought.

The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, All things to us, but in the course of time Through seeking we may learn and know things better. But as for certain truth, no man has known it, Nor shall he know it,neither of the gods Nor yet of all the things of which I speak. For even if by chance he were to utter The final truth, he would himself not know it: For all is but a woven web of guesses

If an ox could paint a picture, his god would look like an ox.

There is one God – supreme among gods and men – who is like mortals in neither body nor mind.

If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the works which men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods’ bodies the same shape as their own.

Men always makes gods in their own image.

Men create the gods in their own image.

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.

All men begin their learning with Homer.

No man knows distinctly anything, and no man ever will.

One must be a sage to recognize a sage.

For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth.