Plato, Sophist, section 249d

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[249d] and must also refuse utterly to listen to those who say that being is universal motion; he must quote the children's prayer,¹ “all things immovable and in motion,” and must say that being and the universe consist of both.

Theaetetus
Very true.

Stranger
Do we not, then, seem to have attained at last a pretty good definition of being?

Theaetetus
Certainly.

Stranger
But dear me, Theaetetus! I think we are now going to discover the difficulty of the inquiry about being.

1 Nothing further seems to he known about this prayer. Stallbaum thought the reference was to a game in which the children said ὅσα ἀκίνητα καὶ κεκινημένα εἴη, “may all unmoved things be moved.”

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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