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.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that everything is interconnected and composed of elements from all things.
Anaxagoras' quote reflects the philosophical idea of unity in diversity, emphasizing that all entities in existence are interrelated and share fundamental components. It suggests that every aspect of reality contains a piece of everything else, reinforcing the notion that separation is an illusion and that existence is an intricate web of connections.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of community, this quote could be used to highlight how every individual contributes to the whole.
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.
Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.
The descent into Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.
Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
The basis of drama is... the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable.
And I am still alive-what though, my damnation is eternal. A man who deliberately mutilates himself is truly damned, is he not? I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am.
If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.
Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.
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