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Anaxagoras Quotes

500 BC–428 BC Greece

Anaxagoras (c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Clazomenae in Asia Minor. He introduced the concept of Nous (Mind), as an ordering force in the cosmos.

Greece
Authors
Mathematicians
Philosophers
Physicists

Random Anaxagoras quote

6 quotes

All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite.

Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone itself by itself.

The sun provides the moon with its brightness.

The Greeks follow a wrong usage in speaking of coming into being and passing away; for nothing comes into being or passes away, but there is mingling and separation of things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being mixture, and passing away separation.

Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins or ceases to be; for nothing comes into being or is destroyed; but all is an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent things: so that all-becoming might more correctly be called becoming-mixed, and all corruption, becoming-separate.

Thought is something limitless and independent, and has been mixed with no thing but is alone by itself. ... What was mingled with it would have prevented it from having power over anything in the way in which it does. ... For it is the finest of all things and the purest.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Anaxagoras (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.