Thales
1.
Some say that [the earth] rests on water. This in fact is the oldest view that has been transmitted to us, and they say that it was advanced by Thales of Miletus who thought that the earth rests because it can float like a log or something else of that sort (for none of these thigs can rest on air, but they can rest on water) — as though the same must not hold of the water supporting the earth as holds of the earth itself.
(Aristotle, On the Heavens 294a28)
2.
Most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things. For they say that the element and first principle of the things that exist is that from which they all are and from which they first come into being and into which they are finally destroyed, its substance remaining and its properties changing... There must be some nature — either one or more than one — from which the other things come into being, it being preserved. But as to the number and form of this sort of principle, they do not all agree. Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, says that it is water (that is why he declares that the earth rests on water). He perhaps came to acquire this belief from seeing that the nourishment of everything is moist and that heat itself comes from this and lives by this (for that from which anything comes into being is its first principle) - he came to his belief both for this reason and because the seeds of everything have a moist nature, and water is the natural principle of moist things.
(Aristotle, Metaphysics 983b6)
3.
Some say that [soul] is mixed in the whole universe. Perhaps that is why Thales thought that everything was full of gods.
(Aristotle, On the Soul 411a7)
4.
Thales, judging by what they report, seems to have believed that the soul was something which produces motion, inasmuch as he said that the magnet has a soul because it moves iron.
(Aristotle, On the Soul 405a19)