Tag: Paradox

Agathon, fr. 5

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Even god is deprived of this one thing:
To render undone whatever has been done.

μόνου γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ θεὸς στερίσκεται,
ἀγένητα ποιεῖν ἅσσ’ ἂν ᾖ πεπραγμένα

Agathon, tragic poet, guest-star in Platonic dialogues and a play by Aristophanes, may not have known he was an early formulator of a time-travel paradox…

Democritus, fr. 296

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“Old age is the perfect handicap: it has everything and lacks everything.”

 

γῆρας ὁλόκληρός ἐστι πήρωσις·

πάντ’ ἔχει καὶ πᾶσιν ἐνδεῖ.

Demosthenes, Philippic 1.2

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“What is worse from bygone days provides the best safeguard for the future.”

 

 

ὃ γάρ ἐστι χείριστον αὐτῶν ἐκ τοῦ παρεληλυθότος χρόνου, τοῦτο πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα βέλτιστον ὑπάρχει.

Parmenides, fr. 6.16

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“The path of all things goes backwards.”

 

 

…πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.

 

Zeno (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Β 4.1001 b7)

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[Zeno said that] “That which does not make something bigger or smaller when it is added or taken away is not real.”

 

ὃ γὰρ  µήτε προστιθέµενον µήτε ἀφαιρούµενον ποιεῖ µεῖζον

µηδὲ ἔλαττον, οὔ φησιν εἶναι τοῦτο τῶν ὄντων

 

From Zeno of Elea, a student of Parmenides.  Famous for paradoxes (he even appears as an interlocutor for Socrates in Plato’s Parmenides).

(Not the Zeno who founded Stoicism)