(187a22) Anaxagoras asserts that what is is one and many- for they produce other things from their mixture by segregation. He made both his homogeneous substances and his contraries infinite.
(203a20) Anaxagoras makes the elements infinite in number. The infinite is continuous by contact- compounded of the homogeneous parts. He held that any part is a mixture in the same way as the whole on the ground of the observed fact that anything comes out of anything. Once upon a time all things were together.
(205b1) Anaxagoras gives an absurd account of why the infinite is at rest. He says that the infinite itself is the cause of its being fixed. This is because it is in itself, since nothing else contains it- on the assumption that wherever anything is, it is there by its own nature.
(213a24) Anaxagoras refutes the existence of the void by straining wine-skins and showing the resistance of the air.
(250b24) Anaxagoras says that all things were together and at rest for an infinite period of time, and then mind introduced motion and separated them.
(256b24) So Anaxagoras is right when he says that mind is impassive and unmixed, since he makes it the principle of motion; for it could cause motion in this way only by being itself unmoved, and have control only by being unmixed.
(270b24) And so, implying that the primary body is something else beyond earth, fire, air and water, they gave the highest place the name of aether, derived from the fact that it 'runs always' for an eternity of time. Anaxagoras however misuses this name, taking aether as equivalent to fire.
(301a11) No natural fact can originate in chance. This is a point which Anaxagoras seems to have thoroughly grasped; for he starts his cosmogeny from unmoved things.
(302a29) Anaxagoras opposes Empedocles' view of the elements. Empedocles says that fire and earth and the related bodies are elementary bodies of which all things are composed; but this Anaxagoras denies. His elements are the homoeomerous things, viz. flesh, bone, and the like. Earth and fire are mixtures, composed of them and all the other seeds, each consisting of a collection of all the homoeomerous bodies, separately invisible; and that explains why from these two bodies all others are generated (to him fire and aether are the same thing)
(302b4) Of those who deny the existence of a void some, like Anaxagoras and Empedocles, have not tried to analyse the notions of light and heavy at all
(314a14) And yet Anaxagoras failed to understand his own utterance. He says, at all events, that coming to be and passing away are the same as being altered; yet he affirms that the elements are many (infinite)
(342b27) Anaxagoras and Democritus declare that comets are a conjunction of the planets, approaching one another and so appearing to touch one another
(345a25) Anaxagoras says that the milky way is the light of certain stars.
(348b12) Anaxagoras says a violent rain shower occurs when the cloud has risen into cold air
(365a17) Anaxagoras says that earthquakes occur when the ether, which naturally moves upwards, is caught in hollows below the earth and so shakes it
(369b14) Anaxagoras says lightning occurs when a part of the upper ether (which he calls fire) descends from above. Lightning is the gleam of this fire and thunder the hissing noise of its extinction in the cloud
(404a25) Anaxagoras declares that thought set the whole in movement i.e. the moving cause of things is the soul
(404b1) In many places Anaxagoras tells us that the cause of beauty and order is thought, elsewhere that it is soul
(405a13) Anaxagoras seems to distinguish between soul and thought, but in practice he treats them as a single substance, except that it is thought that he specially posits as the principle of all things; at any rate what he says is that thought alone of all that is is simple, unmixed and pure. He assigns both characteristics, knowing and origination of movement, to the same principle when he says that it was thought that set the whole in movement
(429a19) Anaxagoras says that since everything is a possible object of thought, mind, in order to dominate (that is, to know) must be pure from all admixture; for the copresence of what is alien to its nature is a hindrance and a block: it follows that it can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called thought is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing. For this reason it cannot be regarded as blended with the body: if so it would acquire some quality, e.g. warmth or cold: as it is, it has none. It was a good idea to call the soul 'the place of forms', though this description holds only of the thinking soul, and even this is the forms only potentially, not actually
(470b33) Anaxagoras says that when fish discharge water through their gills, air is formed in the mouth for there can be no vacuum and they respire by drawing in this
(687a1) It is the opinion of Anaxagoras that the possession of these hands is the cause of man being, of all the animals, the most intelligent
(815a15) Anaxagoras declared that plants are animals and feel joy and sadness
(815b16) Anaxagoras declared that plants possessed intellect and intelligence
(816b26) Anaxagoras declared plants had respiration
(817a26) Anaxagoras said that the seeds of plants derive from the air
(903a8) Anaxagoras says that sounds are more audible at night because the air is heated during the day thus hisses and roars
(985a18) 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.
(1069b20) Therefore not only can a thing come to be, 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 men seem to have had some notion of matter.
(1075b8) Anaxagoras makes the Good a motive principle; for thought moves things, but moves them for the sake of something which must be other than it
Anaxagoras says mind produces order and cause. To find why something is created, he must find out how it is best for that thing to be. Anaxagoras assigned to mind no causality for the order of the world, using all the elements as causes instead. Being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing and the condition without which it could not be a cause, Anaxagoras says it is because of bones and sinews and all the rest that I do what I am doing and not through choice of what is best, though it is true if it were said that without such bones and sinew etc. I should not be able to do what I think is right(p99)