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Everything has evolved; there are no eternal facts, as there are likewise no absolute truths.
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“Everything has evolved; there are no eternal facts, as there are likewise no absolute truths.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Source
Human, All-Too-Human
Date
1909
English wording
Helen Zimmern — Translator · from German
Meaning

Meaning of “Everything has evolved; there are no eternal facts,…”

Nietzsche argues for historical philosophizing: concepts and human arrangements should be examined as things that developed rather than treated as timeless givens.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 2; Helen Zimmern translation.

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AttitudeChange and GrowthDeepGrowthMindPhilosophyShortThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTruthHistoryPerspective
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Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.
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“Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.”

William James · Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking · 1907
Meaning & context

James presents pragmatism as a method that makes theories answer to practical consequences and experience instead of allowing abstract formulations to remain rigid and self-sufficient.

Source details

Pragmatism, Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means”; Project Gutenberg #5116. The sentence follows James’s claim that theories become instruments rather than final answers.

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A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
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“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · 1776
Meaning & context

Custom can disguise error by making the familiar feel legitimate; critical judgment requires re-examining practices that have escaped scrutiny through repetition.

Source details

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented opening sentence is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine argues that familiarity can make a wrong practice appear right before public argument unsettles the custom.

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To define is to limit.
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“To define is to limit.”

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray — 1891 edition · 1891
Voice: Fictional character · Lord Henry Wotton
Meaning & context

Definitions clarify ideas but can also narrow them, especially when a label is treated as the complete reality of a person or experience.

Source details

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Chapter 17; Lord Henry answers the Duchess of Monmouth’s question “What are you?” with “To define is to limit.”

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Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest.
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“Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest.”

William James · Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking · 1907
Meaning & context

James describes theories as tools for moving inquiry and experience forward rather than final intellectual resting places that eliminate the need for further testing or revision.

Source details

Pragmatism, Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means”; Project Gutenberg #5116. Capitalization has been normalized from the represented all-caps sentence while the wording is otherwise preserved.

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The future is yet to come
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“The future is yet to come”

William Hazlitt · On the Past and Future · 1821
Meaning & context

The brief phrase anchors Hazlitt’s argument that the future does not possess greater reality merely because it has not happened yet; he compares its status with the already completed past.

Source details

Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “The future is yet to come” occurs in Hazlitt’s comparison of the already-existing past with the not-yet-existing future: the full sentence continues that the future “has never been anything.” The retained short excerpt is therefore part of a philosophical contrast, not a prediction, forecasting rule or scientific proposition.

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Time makes more converts than reason.
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“Time makes more converts than reason.”

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · 1776
Meaning & context

Ideas that initially provoke resistance can become easier to accept as experience changes what people consider normal or possible.

Source details

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource 1776 sixth-edition transcription; Paine follows his warning that custom can make an error look right by observing that time often changes opinion where argument initially does not.

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