Metaphysics Quotes - Page 4

• An ideal and flawless freedom, "complete freedom", enabling without disabling, is I believe an oxymoron in metaphysics as much as it is an unreachable goal in social life.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Believe, Goal, Enabling

  Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

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• Human society is a ceaseless growth, and unfoldment in terms of spirituality.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Religion, Growth, Spirituality

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• [P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

  Samuel Butler

  Mind, Doe

  Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Large Edition”, p.105, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• When philosophers use a word--"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Home, Essence, Games

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1973). “Philosophical investigations”

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• Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Reality, Intellectual, Quality

  Robert M. Pirsig (1991). “LILA An Inquriry into Morals”

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• Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Men, Thinking, Errors

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1998). “His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce”

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• The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Book, Science, Names

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• I believe in absolute oneness of God and therefore also of humanity.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Believe, Oneness

  Mahatma Gandhi (194?). “Gandhi's Beads of Wisdow: A Synopsis of Gandhiji's Utterances on Truth and Non-violence”

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• Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Play, Poetry, Body

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.193, Harvard University Press

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• The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics.

  Mircea Eliade

  Definitions, Way, Simplest

  "The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom". Book by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross, 2011.

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• In nature there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us. Religions are given to mankind so as to accelerate the process of realisation of fundamental unity.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, Diversity, Religion

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Song, Philosophy, Hands

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Donald H. Reiman, Michael O'Neill (1985). “Fair-copy Manuscripts of Shelley's Poems in European and American Libraries: Including Percy Bysshe Shelley's Holographs and Copies in the Hand of Mary W. Shelley, Located in the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Switzerland, as Well as the Holograph Draft of Keats's Robin Hood”, p.17, Taylor & Francis

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• God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Truth, Self

  Mahatma Gandhi, Anand T. Hingorani, Ganga Anand Hingorani (1985). “The Encyclopaedia of Gandhian Thoughts”

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• But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science.

  David Hume

  Liberty, Free Will, Projects

  David Hume (2012). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.60, Courier Corporation

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• The distinctive contribution that metaphysics makes to our understanding of reality is first that it considers questions about features of reality that the sciences don't, such as the intrinsic nature of causation or the dynamic character of temporal experience.

  L.A. Paul

  Character, Reality, Understanding

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• According to metaphysics, fear is caused by the lack of light.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Light

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• The God of metaphysics is but an idea. But the God of religion, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign Judge of actions and thoughts, is a power.

  Joseph Joubert

  God, Ideas, Judging

  Joseph Joubert (1867). “Some of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert”, p.32

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• The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, 'Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science.

  Dan Brown

  Spiritual, Order, Numbers

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• Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be a great will. If the thought is not a lamp to the will, does not proceed to an act, the wise are imbecile. He alone is strong and happy who has a will. The rest are herds. He uses; they are used. He is of the Maker; they are of the Made. Will is always miraculous, being the presence of God to men. When it appears in a man he is a hero, and all metaphysics are at fault.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Strong, Hero

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3094, Delphi Classics

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• The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this - what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as 'mankind's need for metaphysics.'

  Bryan Magee

  Philosophy, Real, Writing

  "Confessions of a Philosopher". Book by Bryan Magee, 1997.

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• The spirit of non-violence necessarily leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance on God, the rock of ages. If we would seek his aid, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mean, Humility, Heart

  Mahatma Gandhi, Dennis Dalton (1996). “Gandhi: Selected Political Writings”, p.49, Hackett Publishing

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• What a silly thing love is!' said the student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to philosophy and study metaphysics.' So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.

  Oscar Wilde

  Philosophy, Believe, Silly

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Best of Oscar Wilde”, p.164, Jaico Publishing House

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• I was trying to run something to ground that had come to my attention when I was working on the Baroque Cycle. That series, of course, was about the conflict between Newton and Leibniz. Leibniz developed a system of metaphysics called monadology, which looked pretty weird at the time and was promptly buried by Newtonian-style physics.

  Neal Stephenson

  Running, Style, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Narrative and metaphysics alike become flimsy and frivolous if they venture too far from the home base of all humanism - the single, simple human life that we all more or less lead, with its crude elementals of nurture and appetite, love and competition, the sunshine of well-being and the inevitable night of death. We each live this tale. Fiction has no reason to be embarrassed about telling the same story again and again, since we all, with infinite variations, experience the same story.

  John Updike

  Home, Sunshine, Simple

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• In both metaphysics and art, honesty is the best policy. Keep it clean.

  Edward Abbey

  Art, Honesty, Clean

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.11, RosettaBooks

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