Inspirational Quotations by Anaxagoras (Greek Philosopher)

Anaxagoras (c. 500–c. 428 BCE) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the Ionian school, teaching in Athens. One of the leading philosophers of the fifth century BCE and the first of the Pre-Socratic philosophers to settle in Athens, he was the first to formulate a molecular theory of matter and to regard the physical universe as subject to the rule of rationality or reason.

Born in Clazomenae, Asia Minor, Anaxagoras taught for 30 years in Athens, where his many illustrious pupils included the democratic statesman Pericles and the tragedian Euripides. He continued the cosmological style of philosophy begun in Miletus in the preceding century. His explanations of physical phenomena by natural causes brought accusations of impiety, and he was banished from Athens. He withdrew to Lampsacus, on the Hellespont in northern Greece, and died there.

Anaxagoras held that matter is infinitely divisible (i.e. that any piece of matter, regardless of how small it is, contains portions of all kinds of matter,) and that order is produced from chaos by an intelligent principle.

Anaxagoras wrote a book that was well known in Athens in the late fifth century BCE and was available until the sixth century CE. About twenty fragments of the book survive, describing some key points of his theory. Although Anaxagoras wrote in simple Ionic prose, many details of his theory remain obscure and controversial.

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