Anaxagoras Quotes on Knowledge
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c. 500–428 BC) was the first of the pre-Socratics to introduce a separate ordering principle — Nous (mind) — distinct from the material elements it sets in motion, supplying the conceptual ancestor of every subsequent rationalist epistemology in Greek thought. The fragments preserve the doctrine that "in everything there is a portion of everything" except Nous, which alone is unmixed and pure, and the corresponding methodological maxim that "appearances are a glimpse of the unseen" (B21a) — perception gives access to phenomena, but only thought reaches the underlying constituents.
Quotes
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Attributed to Anaxagoras:
“All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; then Mind came and arranged them.”
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Attributed to Anaxagoras:
“The sun is a fiery stone larger than the Peloponnese.”
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Attributed to Anaxagoras:
“I was born to contemplate the heavens.”
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“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.”
quoted in Heinrich Ritter , Tr. from German by Alexander James William Morrison, The History of Ancient Philosophy , Vol.1 (1838) -
“All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite.”
Frag. B 1, quoted in John Burnet 's Early Greek Philosophy , (1920), Chapter 6. -
“Frag. B 1, quoted in John Burnet 's Early Greek Philosophy , (1920), Chapter 6.”
All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite. -
“And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours”
Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet 's Early Greek Philosophy , (1920), Chapter 6. -
“Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet 's Early Greek Philosophy , (1920), Chapter 6.”
And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours -
“Frag. B 12, quoted in John Burnet 's Early Greek Philosophy , (1920), Chapter 6.”
Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone itself by itself.