Anaxagoras (500 BC – 428 BC), also known as Anaxagoras of Clazomene, is one of the most renowned pre-Socratic philosophers. He was born in Clazómenas, in present-day Türkiye, although he lived his best years in Athens.
Among his outstanding disciples we find Pericles, Protagoras and Thucydides, the playwright Euripides and it is suspected that he could also have Socrates and Democritus among his students.
Anaxagoras was the first thinker to talk about the notion of “nous” (mind, thought) as an axial concept in his work. The only book of which fragments have been preserved is the famous “On Nature”.
In today’s article we are going to discover the best phrases of Anaxagoras and his famous quotes which will allow us to delve deeper into the work of one of the most underrated Greek philosophers.
1. If you cheat on me once, it’s your fault; If you fool me two, it’s mine.
Perhaps, the phrase from Anaxagoras that has reached us the most. Certainly, letting yourself be fooled twice by the same person is not having taken the appropriate measures.
2. Science harms those who do not know how to use it as much as it is useful to others.
There are people who do not understand the true meaning of the scientific method.
3. Man is intelligent because he has hands.
Our abilities have their cause in the possibility of manipulating and building increasingly complex objects.
4. Intelligence knows all things and ordered all things that are going to be and those that were and those that are now and those that are not.
One of those phrases about intelligence that links it to the creative gift.
5. All things participate in everything, while intelligence is infinite and governs itself and is not mixed with anything.
A proof of his philosophical monism.
6. The spirit rules the universe.
An essentialist phrase.
7. Intelligence is the purest of all things. He has total knowledge of everything and is the ultimate strength.
Another famous quote from Anaxagoras about knowledge.
8. Nothing is born and nothing perishes. Life is an aggregation, death a separation.
Reflection on the animated.
9. When the voice of an enemy accuses, the silence of a friend condemns.
About friendship and betrayal, in one of the most reproduced Anaxagoras phrases.
10. Movement defines what is alive.
Dynamism and its qualities, according to the Greek thinker.
