Anaximander

Cosmology Ancient Greek -610 – -546 401 quotes

He proposed an infinite, undefined substance called the 'apeiron' as the origin of the cosmos and a geocentric model.

Quotes by Anaximander

The world is a cosmos, an ordered whole, and it is beautiful and divine, and it is a living being with a soul.

Aetius, Placita

The apeiron is the origin and element of all existing things; it is unlimited and indeterminate.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

The earth is cylindrical in shape, like a stone column, and its height is one-third of its width.

Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies

The earth stays in place because of its equal distance from all things.

Aristotle, On the Heavens

Man was born from creatures of a different kind, because other creatures are soon self-supporting, but man alone needs a long period of suckling. For this reason, he would not have survived if he had been like this at the beginning.

Plutarch, Symposiacs

The sun is a circle twenty-eight times the size of the earth, like a chariot wheel, having a hollow felloe full of fire, and showing forth fire at a certain place through an opening as through the nozzle of a bellows.

Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies

The stars are wheels of fire, and the openings through which we see them are like holes in a pipe.

Aetius, Placita Philosophorum

The moon is a circle nineteen times the size of the earth, like a chariot wheel, having a hollow felloe full of fire, and showing forth fire at a certain place through an opening as through the nozzle of a bellows.

Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies

From the eternal and ageless apeiron, all the heavens and all the worlds within them arose.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

The separation of opposites (hot and cold, wet and dry) from the apeiron is the cause of all things.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

The first principle is the apeiron, for it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other indeterminate nature, from which all the heavens and the worlds within them arise.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

The first living creatures were born in the sea and were covered with scales.

Aetius, Placita Philosophorum

Rain is produced by the vapor drawn up from the earth by the sun.

Aetius, Placita Philosophorum

The apeiron encompasses all things and steers all things.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

The apeiron is the source from which things come into being and to which they return according to necessity, for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

The stars are fixed in crystalline spheres.

Aetius, Placita Philosophorum

Eclipses of the sun occur when the opening for the sun's fire is blocked.

Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies

Eclipses of the moon occur when the opening for the moon's fire is blocked.

Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies

The earth is in the middle of the cosmos.

Aetius, Placita Philosophorum

The apeiron has no beginning and no end.

Aristotle, Physics