Anaxagoras Quotations

It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me.

Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.

Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.

The seed of everything is in everything else.

The descent to Hades is the same from every place.

The descent into Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.

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 preexisting things; so that all becoming might more correctly be called becoming mixed, and all corruption, becoming separate.

Neither is there a smallest part of what is small, but there is always a smaller (for it is impossible that what is should cease to be). Likewise there is always something larger than what is large.

And since the portions of the great and the small are equal in number, so too all things would be in everything. Nor is it possible that they should exist apart, but all things have a portion of everything.

The forces of rotation caused red hot masses of stones to be torn away from the Earth and to be thrown into the ether, and this is the origin of the stars.

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

The Sun is a mass of fiery stone, a little larger than Greece.

The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.

The Greeks do not think correctly about coming-to-be and passing-away; for no thing comes to be or passes away, but is mixed together and dissociated from the things that are. And thus they would be correct to call coming-to-be mixing-together and passing-away dissociating

The sun provides the moon with its brightness.

In everything, there is a share of everything

The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.

Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.

Appearances are but a glimpse of what is hidden.

There is no smallest among the small and no largest among the large, but always something still smaller and something still larger.

All other things have a portion of everything, but Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing but is all alone by itself.

Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.