Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that conflict arises from ownership and possessiveness.
Anaxagoras implies that the concepts of ownership, represented by 'mine' and 'thine', are significant sources of turmoil in human relationships. Without the distinction of possession, people might find greater peace and harmony, as many conflicts stem from how we attribute value to things based on ownership.
In practice
In a discussion about minimalism, this quote could emphasize the benefits of reducing attachments.
The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.
Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me.
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.
And since the portions of the great and the small are equal in number, so too all things would be in everything. Nor is it possible that they should exist apart, but all things have a portion of everything.
The descent into Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.
I wanted us to share the sense that the number of wrong moves far exceeds the number of good moves, to share the frightening instability of the correct decision, to bond in being confounded.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.