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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.

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Mind

More quotes by Anaxagoras

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.

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

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The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anaxagoras (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.