Heraclitus

(1) It is wise to hearken, not to me but to my word, and to confess that all things are one…. (57) Good and ill are one…. (59) Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one. (60) Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were not. (61) To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right…. (96) The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has. (97) Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man. (98, 99) The wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man. — “Fragments”

Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and a native of Ephesus. While little is known about his life outside what he reveals in the extant fragments of his writings, he held an unambiguous contempt for humanity and saw himself as an autodidact. Most famous for his dictum “You can’t step into the same river twice,” Heraclitus saw change as the only unchanging principle in the universe.