The opposite is beneficial; from things that differ comes the fairest attunement; all things are born through strife.

This saying is attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus (late 6th–early 5th century BCE), whose work survives only in fragments quoted by later authors. It reflects his characteristic doctrine that reality is a dynamic process structured by tension between opposites (day/night, war/peace, etc.). The wording about “attunement” (harmoniē) evokes Greek musical and craft imagery: harmony is not the absence of conflict but a fitting-together produced by opposing pulls, like a bow or lyre. The fragment is typically grouped with others in which Heraclitus argues that strife (eris/polemos) is fundamental to the cosmos and that apparent discord can be the condition of order.

Heraclitus claims that opposition is not merely destructive; it is productive and even necessary. What looks like contradiction—hot/cold, up/down, life/death—generates the “fairest attunement,” a stable pattern arising from balanced tension. The final clause, that “all things are born through strife,” pushes the idea beyond ethics into cosmology: becoming itself depends on conflict, differentiation, and contest. Read this way, the quote challenges any simplistic ideal of harmony as uniformity. It suggests that order, creativity, and flourishing often emerge from friction, and that understanding the world requires seeing how contraries interdepend rather than trying to eliminate one side.

1) “What is opposed brings together; the finest harmony is composed of things at variance, and everything comes to be through strife.”
2) “The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony; all things take place by strife.”
3) “Opposition is beneficial; from what differs comes the fairest harmony; all things come into being through conflict.”