All things were together; then came Mind and set them in order.
Anaxagoras. This sentence is said to be the first sentence of the only book Anaxagoras wrote – title unknown. 428 - 499 BC.
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.
Anxagoras Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.
Since these things are so, it is right to think that there are many different things present in everything that is being combined, and seeds of all things, having all sorts of forms, colors, and flavors, and that humans and also the other animals were compounded, as many as have soul. Also that there are cities that have been constructed by humans and works made, just as with us, and that there are a sun and a moon and other heavenly bodies for them, just as with us, and the earth grows many different things for them, the most valuable of which they gather together into their household and use. I have said this about the separation off, because there would be separation off not only for us but also elsewhere.
Anxagoras Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.
Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, The descent to Hades is the same from every place.
Diogenes Laertius. Book 2. 3rd century AD.
Then, I ween, there is Anaxagoras, a doughty champion, whom they call Mind, because forsooth his was the mind which suddenly woke up and fitted closely together all that had formerly been in a medley of confusion.
Diogenes Laertius. Book 2. 3rd century AD.
...to different persons, as was said before too; and Anaxagoras The physical philosopher, 500 -428 B.C., born at... would seem to you an odd sort of person.' But Anaxagoras answered in that way because he saw ...
Aristotle Eudemian Ethics. Book 1, Section 1215b. 4th century BC.
Any way plants seem to participate in life of that kind; and so do children too, inasmuch as at their first procreation in the mother, although alive, they stay asleep all the time. So that it is clear from considerations of this sort that the precise nature of well-being and of the good in life escapes our investigation. Now it is said that when somebody persisted in putting various difficulties of this sort to Anaxagoras1 and went on asking for what object one should choose to come into existence rather than not, he replied by saying, For the sake of contemplating the heavens and the whole order of the universe.Aristotle Eudemian Ethics. Book 1, Section 1216a. 4th century BC.
...contemplating the heavens and the whole order of the universe.' Anaxagoras therefore thought that the alternative of being alive was valuable for the sake of some kind of knowledge
Aristotle Eudemian Ethics. Book 1, Section 1215b 6 n. 4th century BC.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who, though older than Empedocles, was later in his philosophical activity, says the principles are infinite in number; for he says almost all the things that are homogeneous are generated and destroyed (as water or fire is) only by aggregation and segregation, and are not in any other sense generated or destroyed, but remain eternally.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 984a12-984a16. 4th century BC.
When these men and the principles of this kind had had their day, as the latter were found inadequate to generate the nature of things, men were again forced by the truth itself, as we said, to inquire into the next kind of cause. For surely it is not likely either that fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be, or that those thinkers should have supposed it was; nor again could it be right to ascribe so great a matter to spontaneity and luck. When one man said, then, that reason was present—as in animals, so throughout nature—as the cause of the world and of all its order, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors. We know that Anaxagoras certainly adopted these views, but Hermotimus of Clazomenae is credited with expressing them earlier. Those who thought thus stated that there is a principle of things which is at the same time the cause of beauty, and that sort of cause from which things acquire movement.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 984b8-984b22. 4th century BC.
These thinkers, as we say, evidently got hold up to a certain point of two of the causes which we distinguished in our work on nature—the matter and the Metaphysics of the movement,—vaguely, however, and with no clearness, but as untrained men behave in fights; for they go round their opponents and often strike fine blows, but they do not fight on scientific principles, and so these thinkers do not seem to know what they say; for it is evident that, as a rule, they make no use of their causes except to a small extent. For Anaxagoras uses reason as a deus ex machina for the making of the world, and when he is at a loss to tell for what cause something necessarily is, then he drags reason in, but in all other cases ascribes events to anything rather than to reason.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 985a12-985a28. 4th century BC.
Plato, then, declared himself thus on the points in question; it is evident from what has been said that he has used only two causes, that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the cause of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dyad, the great and the small. Further, he has assigned the cause of good and that of evil to the elements, one to each of the two, as we say some of his predecessors sought to do, e.g. Empedocles and Anaxagoras.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 988a8-988a17. 4th century BC.
Plato spoke of the great and the small, the Italians of the infinite, Empedocles of fire, earth, water, and air, Anaxagoras of the infinity of homogeneous things.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 988a18-988a32. 4th century BC.
As regards Anaxagoras, if one were to suppose that he said there were two elements, the supposition would accord thoroughly with a view which Anaxagoras himself did not state articulately, but which he must have accepted if any one had developed his view.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 989a31-989b21. 4th century BC.
Above all one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But again they help in no way towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), nor towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them; though if they were, they might be thought to be causes, as white causes whiteness in that with which it is mixed. But this argument, which first Anaxagoras and later Eudoxus and certain others used, is too easily upset; for it is not difficult to collect many insuperable objections to such a view.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book I 991a9-991a19. 4th century BC.
And we thus get the doctrine of Anaxagoras, that all things are mixed together; so that nothing really exists.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book IV 1007b19-1008a7. 4th century BC.
If, then, that which is not cannot come to be, the thing must have existed before as both contraries alike, as Anaxagoras says all is mixed in all […]
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book IV 1009a22-1009a38. 4th century BC.
A saying of Anaxagoras to some of his friends is also related,—that things would be for them such as they supposed them to be. And they say that Homer also evidently had this opinion, because he made Hector, when he was unconscious from the blow, lie ‘thinking other thoughts’,—which implies that even those who are bereft of thought have thoughts, though not the same. Evidently, then, if both are forms of thought, the real things also are at the same time so and not so. And it is in this direction that the consequences are most difficult. For if those who have seen most of what truth is possible for us (and these are those who seek and love it most)—if these have such opinions and express these views about the truth, is it not natural that beginners in philosophy should lose heart? For to seek the truth would be to pursue flying game.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book IV 1009b1-1009b38. 4th century BC.
The doctrine of Heraclitus, that all things are and are not, seems to make everything true, while that of Anaxagoras, that there is an intermediate between the terms of a contradiction, seems to make everything false; for when things are mixed, the mixture is neither good nor not-good, so that one cannot say anything that is true.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book IV 1012a18-1012a28. 4th century BC.
For each number is said to be many because it consists of ones and because each number is measurable by one; and it is many as that which is opposed to one, not to the few. In this sense, then, even two is many—not however in the sense of a plurality which is excessive either relatively or absolutely; it is the first plurality. But without qualification two is few; for it is the first plurality which is deficient. (For this reason Anaxagoras was not right in leaving the subject with the statement that all things were together, boundless both in multitude and in smallness—where by ‘and in smallness’ he meant ‘and in fewness’; for they could not have been boundless in fewness.) For it is not one, as some say, but two, that make a few.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book XI 1056b32-1669. 4th century BC.
We could not be right, then, in accepting the views either of Heraclitus or of Anaxagoras. If we were, it would follow that contraries would be predicated of the same subject, for when Anaxagoras says a portion of everything is in everything, he says nothing is sweet any more than it is bitter, and so with any other pair of contraries, since in everything everything is present not potentially only, but actually and separately. And similarly all statements cannot be false nor all true, both because of many other difficulties which might be deduced as arising from this position, and because if all are false it will not be true even to say all are false, and if all are true it will not be false to say all are false.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book XI 1063b35-1680. 4th century BC.
The matter, then, which changes must be capable of both states. And since things are said to be in two ways, everything changes from that which is potentially to that which is actually, e.g. from the potentially white to the actually white, and similarly in the case of increase and diminution. Therefore not only can a thing come to be, incidentally, out of that which is not, but also all things come to be out of that which is, but is potentially, and is not actually. And this is the ‘One’ of Anaxagoras; for instead of ‘all things were together’ and the ‘Mixture’ of Empedocles and Anaximander and the account given by Democritus, it is better to say all things were together potentially but not actually. Therefore these thinkers seem to have had some notion of matter.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book XII 1069b24-1689. 4th century BC.
That actuality is prior is testified by Anaxagoras (for his thought is actuality) and by Empedocles in his doctrine of love and strife, and by those who say that there is always movement, e.g. Leucippus.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book XII, 1072a6-1693. 4th century BC.
Anaxagoras makes the good a motive principle; for thought moves things, but moves them for the sake of something, which must be something other than it, except according to our way of stating the case; for the medical art is in a sense health. It is paradoxical also not to suppose a contrary to the good, i.e. to thought. But all who speak of the contraries make no use of the contraries, unless we bring their views into shape. And why some things are perishable and others imperishable, no one tells us; for they make all existing things out of the same principles. Further, some make existing things out of the non-existent; and others to avoid the necessity of this make all things one.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book XII 1075b16-1700. 4th century BC.
These poets, however, speak thus only because they think of the rulers of the world as changing; for those of them who combine two characters in that they do not use mythical language throughout, e.g. Pherecydes and some others, make the original generating agent the Best, and so do the Magi, and some of the later sages also, e.g. Empedocles and Anaxagoras, of whom one made friendship an element, and the other made thought a principle. Of those who maintain the existence of the unchangeable substances some say the one itself is the good itself; but they thought its substance lay mainly in its unity.
Aristotle Metaphysics. Book XIV 1091b14-1724. 4th century BC.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae being asked, ‘Who was the happiest of men’? answered, ‘None of those you suppose, but one who would appear a strange being to you’, because he saw that the questioner thought it impossible for one not great and beautiful or rich to deserve the epithet ‘happy’, while he himself perhaps thought that the man who lived painlessly and pure of injustice or else engaged in some divine contemplation was really, as far as a man may be, blessed.
Aristotle Eudemian Ethics. Book I 1215a26-1215b14. 4th century BC.
And so they tell us that Anaxagoras answered a man who was raising problems of this sort and asking why one should choose rather to be born than not by saying ‘for the sake of viewing the heavens and the whole order of the universe’.
Aristotle Eudemian Ethics. Book I 1216a11-1216a27. 4th century BC.
Furthermore, they falsely accused the sophist Anaxagoras, who was Pericles' teacher, of impiety against the gods; and they involved Pericles in their accusations and malicious charges, since jealousy made them eager to discredit the eminence as well as the fame of the man.
Diodorus Siculus Library. Book XII, Chapter 39. 1st century BC.
You may infer this to be true on many other grounds and especially by scanning the careers of those who have become eminent before your time. You will hear first that Pericles, who is thought to have far surpassed all men of his age in intellectual grasp, addressed himself to Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and only after being his pupil acquired this power of judgement. You will next discover that Alcibiades, though his natural disposition was far inferior in respect to virtue and it was his pleasure to behave himself now arrogantly, now obsequiously, now licentiously, yet, as a fruit of his association with Socrates, he made correction of many errors of his life and over the rest drew a veil of oblivion by the greatness of his later achievements.
Demosthenes Erotic Essays. Section 45. 4th century BC.
And of these men who carried out such great enterprises not one neglected the art of discourse; nay, so much more did they apply their minds to eloquence than to other things, that Solon was named one of the seven sophists and was given the title which is now dishonored and on trial here; and Pericles studied under two of the sophists, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and Damon, the latter in his day reputed to be the wisest among the Athenians.
Isocrates Antidosis. Section 235. 4th century BC.
The Argives are the only Greeks that I know of who have been divided into three kingdoms. For in the reign of Anaxagoras, son of Argeus, son of Megapenthes, the women were smitten with madness, and straying from their homes they roamed about the country, until Melampus the son of Amythaon cured them of the plague on condition that he himself and his brother Bias had a share of the kingdom equal to that of Anaxagoras. Now descended from Bias five men, Neleids on their mother's side, occupied the throne for four generations down to Cyanippus, son of Aegialeus, and descended from Melampus six men in six generations down to Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus.
Pausanias Description of Greece. Section 4. 2nd century AD.
But the native house of the family of Anaxagoras ruled longer than the other two. For Iphis, son of Alector, son of Anaxagoras, left the throne to Sthenelus, son of Capaneus his brother. After the capture of Troy, Amphilochus migrated to the people now called the Amphilochians, and, Cyanippus having died without issue, Cylarabes, son of Sthenelus, became sole king. However, he too left no offspring, and Argos was seized by Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who was a neighbor. Besides his ancestral dominion, he had extended his rule over the greater part of Arcadia and had succeeded to the throne of Sparta; he also had a contingent of Phocian allies always ready to help him.
Pausanias Description of Greece. Section 5. 2nd century AD.
Do I not even believe that the sun or yet the moon are gods, as the rest of mankind do? “No, by Zeus, judges, since he says that the sun is a stone and the moon earth.” Do you think you are accusing Anaxagoras, my dear Meletus, and do you so despise these gentlemen and think they are so unversed in letters as not to know, that the books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian are full of such utterances? And forsooth the youth learn these doctrines from me, which they can buy sometimes
Plato Apology. 26d. 4th century BC.
[...] in the end, you know, that would make the sleeping Endymion mere nonsense; he would be nowhere, for everything else would be in the same state as he, sound asleep. Or if all thing were mixed together and never separated, the saying of Anaxagoras, all things are chaos, would soon come true. And in like manner, my dear Cebes, if all things that have life should die, and, when they had died, the dead should remain in that condition, is it not inevitable that at last all things would be dead.
Plato Phaedo. 72c. 4th century BC.
[...] effectiveness in all directions seem somehow to come from such pursuits. This was in Pericles added to his great natural abilities; for it was, I think, his falling in with Anaxagoras, who was just such a man, that filled him with high thoughts and taught him the nature of mind and of lack of mind, subjects about which Anaxagoras used chiefly to discourse, and from these speculations he drew and applied to the art of speaking what is of use to it.
Plato Phaedrus. 270a. 4th century BC.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
