Metaphysics Quotes

1. "Insofar as the intervention of grace constitutes the core of religious experience, the constant aim of every religious movement ought to be a reduction of transcendence coupled with an unswerving dedication to immanence. Let metaphysics and science pursue the elaboration of transcendent, causal economies; the domain of religion is immanence and, more precisely, the immanence of what is actually given as a gift. Religious thinking will be religious in character precisely to the extent that it is capable of faithfully thinking immanence. Religion, for the sake of grace, forsakes transcendence."
Author: Adam Miller

2. "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever."
Author: Aldous Huxley

3. "Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy."
Author: Bertrand Russell

4. "Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers. Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as a hallucination and, therefore, not true. The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man."
Author: C.G. Jung

5. "If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition."
Author: C.G. Jung

6. "Sleeplessness is like metaphysics. Be there. -Charles Simic"
Author: Charles Simic

7. "Children are defenseless to the ‘virus of dualism' in whatever form it comes in - which is why [religious ideas] should not be introduced until [children reach] a cognitive age. Religious indoctrination is not required to raise healthy children. Their imagination should be nourished… but not invalidated or shamed. [The result can] be a neurosis, which I believe, is why [people] go to religion and metaphysics when they get older... In the best scenario, children would grow through their imagination into creative adults in an environment that is based on current psychology and a science-based education."
Author: Christopher Loren

8. "To bracket form and finality out of one's investigations as far as reason allows is a matter of method, but to deny their reality altogether is a matter of metaphysics."
Author: David Bentley Hart

9. "Naturalism is a picture of the whole of reality that cannot, according to its own intrinsic premises, address the being of the whole; it is a metaphysics of the rejection of metaphysics, a transcendental certainty of the impossibility of transcendental truth, and so requires an act of pure credence logically immune to any verification (after all, if there is a God he can presumably reveal himself to seeking minds, but if there is not then there can be no "natural" confirmation of the fact). Thus naturalism must forever remain a pure assertion, a pure conviction, a confession of blind assurance in an inaccessible beyond; and that beyond, more paradoxically still, is the beyond of no beyond."
Author: David Bentley Hart

10. "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
Author: David Hume

11. "I teach metaphysics and pastor a church."
Author: Della Reese

12. "The principle of vis inertiae (...) seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress"
Author: Edgar Allan Poe

13. "This is what is meant by the phenomenology of the science-making process: Self-observation always leads us to an existential point about the metaphysics of experience, and it is almost always a transforming moment. (p. 286)"
Author: Eugene Taylor

14. "Metaphysics, in my understanding, is the unity of knowledge and the meaning and orientation this unity gives to life. If this unity is the unity of knowledge, how can it be all that subjective? It is a faith grounded in knowledge."
Author: Fazlur Rahman

15. "Metaphysics has always struck me as a prolonged form of latent insanity."
Author: Fernando Pessoa

16. "There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any "social contract" or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world."
Author: George Steiner

17. "I was born the 26th of December. . . Arrive by dint of perseverance, but step by step. . . Tenancy to exaggerate the importance of earthly life. Avaricious of self. Constant in their affections and their hatreds. . . Yes, the Capricorn is a beast of solitude. Slow, steady, and persevering. Lives on several levels at once. Thinks in circles. Fascinated by death. Ever climbing, climbing. In search of the edelweiss, presumably. Or could it be immortelle? Knows no mother. Only "the mothers". Laughs little and usually on the wrong side of the face. . . Speaks truthfully instead of kindly. Metaphysics, abstractions, electromagnetic displays. Dives to the depths. Sees stars, comets, and asteroids where others see only moles, warts, and pimples. Feeds on himself when tired of playing the man-eating shark. A paranoiac. An ambulatory paranoiac. But constant in his affections - and his hatreds. Ouais!"
Author: Henry Miller

18. "Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us."
Author: Huston Smith

19. "The world appears rectilinear, but is in fact curvilinear - a literal truth in physics, and a metaphorical one in metaphysics."
Author: Iain McGilchrist

20. "Ought not a Minister to have, First, a good understanding, a clear apprehension, a sound judgment, and a capacity of reasoning with some closeness. . . . Is not some acquaintance with what has been termed the second part of logic, (metaphysics), if not so necessary as [logic itself], yet highly expedient? Should not a Minister be acquainted with at least the general grounds of natural philosophy? JOHN WESLEY, ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY"
Author: J.P. Moreland

21. "In periods when shallow speculation is rife, one might think that metaphysics would shine forth, at least, by the brilliance of its modest reserve. But the very age that is unaware of the majesty of metaphysics, likewise overlooks its poverty. Its majesty? It is wisdom. Its poverty? It is human science."
Author: Jacques Maritain

22. "He was insane, he thought people were trying to destroy him, to suck out his guts, but, she noted, in the rare event that someone was trying to destroy you, to suck out your guts, insanity was a goodly metaphysics."
Author: Jaimy Gordon

23. "Therefore, poets do not 'fit' into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their 'places' seriously. They openly see its roles as theatrical, its styles as poses, its clothing costumes, its rules conventional, its crises arranged, its conflicts performed and its metaphysics ideological."
Author: James P. Carse

24. "Theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and quantum physics are merely ways for God to have his smart people believe in him"
Author: Jeremy Aldana

25. "There are no metaphysics."
Author: Jonathan Lethem

26. "They seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy"
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

27. "Logic works, metaphysics contemplates."
Author: Joseph Joubert

28. "There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet."
Author: Koren Zailckas

29. "Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics....Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, "To Hell with argument, I have faith." That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.Objectivism advocates reason as man's sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that's all."
Author: Leonard Peikoff

30. "Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is "purely descriptive."
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

31. "I only read biographies, metaphysics and psychology. I can dream up my own fiction."
Author: Mae West

32. "Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics."
Author: Maimonides

33. "Questions are not happenstance thoughts nor are questions common problems of today which one picks up from hearsay and booklearning and decks out with a gesture of profundity questions grow out of confrontation with the subject matter and the subject matter is there only where eyes are, it is in this manner that questions will be posed and all the more considering that questions that have today fallen out of fashion in the great industry of problems. One stands up for nothing more than the normal running of the industry. Philosophy interprets its corruption as the resurrection of metaphysics."
Author: Martin Heidegger

34. "To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics."
Author: Martin Heidegger

35. "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."
Author: Oscar Wilde

36. "All our language is composed of brief little dreams; and the wonderful thing is that we sometimes make of them strangely accurate and marvelously reasonable thoughts. What should we be without the help of that which does not exist? Very little. And our unoccupied minds would languish if fables, mistaken notions, abstractions, beliefs, and monsters, hypotheses, and the so-called problems of metaphysics did not people with beings and objectless images our natural depths and darkness. Myths are the souls of our actions and our loves. We cannot act without moving towards a phantom. We can love only what we create."
Author: Paul Valéry

37. "One salutary development in recent ethical theorizing is the widespread recognition that no short argument will serve to eliminate any of the major metaethical positions. Such theories have to weave together views in semantics, epistemology, moral psychology and metaphysics. The comprehensive, holistic character of much recent theorizing suggests the futility of fastening on just a single sort of argument to refute a developed version of realism or antirealism. No one any longer thinks that ethical naturalism can be undermined in a single stroke by the open question argument, or that appeal to the descriptive semantics of moral discourse is sufficient to refute noncognitivism."
Author: Russ Shafer Landau

38. "The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics."
Author: Sam Harris

39. "...Fate forced me to become a two-man woman. But there was no effing way I could be a four-man woman.Even metaphysics couldn't keep that from being whorey."
Author: Sierra Dean

40. "It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary...but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch."
Author: Steve Martin

41. "Go beyond science, into the region of metaphysics. Real religion is beyond argument. It can only be lived both inwardly and outwardly."
Author: Swami Sivananda

42. "Always beware of turning religion into metaphysics: Morality is its essence."
Author: Voltaire

43. "Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is."
Author: Voltaire

44. "A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
Author: Walt Whitman

45. "The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing."
Author: Wilhelm Dilthey

46. "Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day."
Author: Wilhelm Dilthey

47. "However, the sciences of society and of history retained their old subservient relation to metaphysics for a long time - well into the eighteenth century."
Author: Wilhelm Dilthey

48. "...all that we saw was owing to your metaphysics."
Author: William Blake

49. "A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality."
Author: William Winwood Reade

50. "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."
Author: Woody Allen

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