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Sophocles
(c. 496 B.C. - c. 406 B.C.)
Greek dramatist and poet who wrote 123 dramas, including Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and others which have survived since the 5th century B.C.
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Science Quotes by Sophocles (8 quotes)
πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.
Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.
Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.
— Sophocles
First line of a choral ode in Antigone, line 332, translated by R.C. Jebb (1891). This may not be the closest translation of ambiguous words. Walter Arnold Kaufmann suggests a closer meaning would be “Much is awesome, but nothing more awesome than man” in Tragedy and Philosophy (1992), 237. Alternate word translations could be terrors, danger, misfortune or distress. Hence the variation in other standard translations on this web page.
Man is uncanny, yet nothing
uncannier than man bestirs itself, rising up beyond him.
uncannier than man bestirs itself, rising up beyond him.
— Sophocles
First line of a choral ode in Antigone, line 332, as translated from a French translation. One of several variations given in Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 3, (2010), 237.
Many the forms of life,
Fearful and strange to see,
But man supreme stands out
For strangeness and for fear.
Fearful and strange to see,
But man supreme stands out
For strangeness and for fear.
— Sophocles
First line of a choral ode in Antigone, line 332, as translated in Harvard Classics. One of several variations given in Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 3, (2010), 237.
Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger than man.
— Sophocles
First line of a choral ode in Antigone, line 332, as translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff (1954) in David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (eds.)The Complete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles (1957), Vol. 2, 170.
Many things cause terror and wonder, yet nothing
is more terrifying and wonderful than man.
is more terrifying and wonderful than man.
— Sophocles
First line of a choral ode in Antigone, line 332, as translated by M. Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett. One of several variations given in Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 3, (2010), 237.
Much wisdom goes with fewest words.
— Sophocles
In Hialmer Day Gould, New Practical Spelling (1905), 16.
One must learn by doing the thing; though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.
— Sophocles
In play, 'Trachiniae', collected in George Young (trans.), The Dramas of Sophocles: Rendered in English Verse: Dramatic and Lyric (1916), 191.
There are many strange and wonderful things, but nothing more strangely wonderful than man.
— Sophocles
First line of a choral ode in Antigone, line 332, as translated by Ian Johnson. One of several variations given in Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 3, (2010), 237.
Quotes by others about Sophocles (1)
The dice of God are always loaded.
[A fragment from a lost play of Sophocles, “Ever the dice of Zeus fall well.”]
[A fragment from a lost play of Sophocles, “Ever the dice of Zeus fall well.”]
A colloquial translation, presumably ironic, from the original Greek phrase (preceding it), as given in 'Compensation', collected in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1903), 102. The more literal translation of the original Greek is discussed in the added Notes section by Joseph Slater in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: First Series, Essays (1979), 234. Fragment translation from Paul Shorey, 'The Influence of Classics on American Literature', The Chautauquan (1906), 43, 129.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
