Against Julian 4.15.75

All the philosophers who tried to work out anything about the causes of natural things—even though they taught otherwise in their schools yet worshiped idols with the common people—have nevertheless touched, as it were, some parts of truth amid the many empty notions in their thinking. Empty though they are through their darkness, they can rightly be preferred to this doctrine we are opposing.

Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages; then Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Melissus, Plato, and the Pythagoreans.