Q0017

Heraclitus

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
Thinker Heraclitus
School Pre-Socratic
Source Fragment DK B8
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Fragment DK B8, within the tradition of Pre-Socratic. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Heraclitus's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Heraclitus. (n.d.). What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0017

MLA: Heraclitus. “What is opposed brings together; from what differs….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0017.

Chicago: Heraclitus. “What is opposed brings together; from what differs….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0017.

Same thinker

More from Heraclitus

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. I searched for myself.

All quotations by Heraclitus

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  4. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.
  5. Of things, some are in our power, and some are not.

Browse the philosophy theme