Metaphysical Quotes - Page 5

• The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Creative, Novelty, Ultimate

  Alfred North Whitehead (1969). “Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology; Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28”, New York : Macmillan

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• The procedure we are pursuing is that of true democracy. Semi-democracy accepts the dictatorship of a majority in establishing its arbitrary, ergo, unnatural, laws. True democracy discovers by patient experiment and unanimous acknowledgement what the laws of nature or universe may be for the physical support and metaphysical satisfaction of the human intellect's function in universe.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Law, Support, Democracy

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2008). “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth”, p.103, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Spiritual, Grief, Reality

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

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• That which is communicated, i.e., understood, is metaphysical. The means of communication is physical.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Communication, Mean, Understood

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1982). “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, p.14, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles; but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.

  John Adams

  Dance, Reading, Dancing

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.315

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• For a metaphysical treat stop at the Big Sur Inn, which is also a haven for stray cats and dogs. Life along the South Coast is just a bed of roses, with a few thorns and nettles interspersed.

  Henry Miller

  Dog, Travel, Cat

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• I do think that metaphysical exploration is like scientific exploration, in the sense that philosophers and scientists are both developing models of reality, and furthermore that we all rely to a significant extent on the idea that models which provide elegant, simple and satisfying explanations are more likely to be true.

  L.A. Paul

  Simple, Reality, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Humanity, Tasks, Social Behavior

  R. Buckminster Fuller “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Men, Europe

  Aldous Huxley (1956). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• History is powerful stuff. One day your world is fine. The next day it's knocked for a metaphysical loop. Was Napoleon really at Waterloo? Would that change what I had for breakfast?

  Henry Bromell

  Change, Powerful, Next Day

  "Fictional character: Chris Stevens". TV Series "Northern Exposure" ("The Body in Question", 1991), 1990-1995.

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• I don't feel there is any spiritual or metaphysical justification for turning our backs on human suffering.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Suffering, Justification

  "Holistic Politics: A Conversation with Marianne Williamson". Interview with Scott London, www.scottlondon.com. 1999.

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• In reality no food is valued solely for its nutritive power and no garment or house solely for the protection it affords against cold weather and rain.... the demand for goods is widely influenced by metaphysical, religious, and ethical considerations, by aesthetic value judgments, by customs, habits, prejudice, tradition, changing fashions, and many other things.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Religious, Fashion, Rain

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.290, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Nothing in our politics is any longer driven or designed by individual humans who have a name and a face; we have sunk from theism into impersonal and depersonalizing deism, a scheme of rule by alien and implacable abstract metaphysical forces.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Names, Faces

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• The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate.

  Max Horkheimer

  Fate, Men, Class

  "Eclipse of Reason" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 23), 1947.

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• Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

  Herman Melville

  Rain, Men, Rivers

  Herman Melville (2015). “Annotated Moby Dick or, the Whale with English Grammar Exercises: by Herman Melville (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.5, Powell Publications, LLC

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• I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Real, Book, Character

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.47, Profile Books

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• Actually I'd always thought he sat in the library with a slim volume of metaphysical poetry until the commissioner called him on the bat phone and summoned him into action. Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Phones, Library, Bats

  Ben Aaronovitch (2012). “Whispers Under Ground”, p.173, Del Rey

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• For the chemists, who wanted to manufacture new medicines and elixirs and transform base substances into noble ones, the notion that there was no metaphysical barrier to doing so - it was just a matter of getting the particles into new arrangements - was encouraging. That was the Baconian programme.

  Catherine Wilson

  Medicine, Noble, Substance

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• About 70% of what I've written about is centered on the clashes and conformities between the emerging life and physical sciences and older metaphysical frameworks in the 17th and 18th centuries. The other 30% consists of one-off essays or researches into other intriguing contemporary topics such as visual experience, aesthetics, social justice issues, and the epistemology of moral knowledge.

  Catherine Wilson

  Issues, Justice, Research

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Both Kant and Fichte thought of traditions of revealed religion as ways of symbolically (that is, with aesthetic emotional power) thinking about our moral condition. Both thought that religion would become more and not less powerful, emotionally and morally, if the claims of scriptures and religious teachings were taken symbolically rather than literally (whatever 'literally' might mean in the case of claims that are either nonsensical or outdated or historically unsupportable if taken as metaphysical or historical assertions).

  Allen W. Wood

  Religious, Powerful, Teaching

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.

  Allen W. Wood

  Tradition, Sympathetic, Theology

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• As with many metaphysical and religious questions, Kant thinks they lie beyond our power to answer them. If you can't stand the frustration involved in accepting this, and insist on finding some more stable position which affords you peace of mind and intellectual self-complacency, then you will find Kant's position "problematic" in the sense that you can't bring yourself to accept it. You may try to kid yourself into accepting either some naturalistic deflationary answer to the problem or some dishonest supernaturalist answer.

  Allen W. Wood

  Religious, Lying, Kids

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded, or as committed to an absurd metaphysical conception of freedom that violates Kant's own philosophy).

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Thinking, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.

  Hilary Putnam

  Science, Sight, Historical

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• A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion.

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Science, Theory, Conclusion

  Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan (1995). “Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays”, p.326, University of Chicago Press

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