Metaphysics Quotes | Quotes about Metaphysics

Kannnadasan 17:14 Leave a Comment

Metaphysics Quote #1

(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason's most important occupations? Still more, how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our desire for knowledge it does not merely forsake us but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us!

Or if the path has merely eluded us so far, what indications may we use that might lead us to hope that in renewed attempts we will be luckier than those who have gone before us?
Immanuel Kant

Metaphysics Quote #2

. . . waves of desert heat . . . I must’ve passed out, because when I woke up I was shivering and stars wheeled above a purple horizon. . . . Then the sun came up, casting long shadows. . . . I heard a vehicle coming. Something coming from far away, gradually growing louder. There was the sound of an engine, rocks under tires. . . . Finally it reached me, the door opened, and Dirk Bickle stepped out. . . .

But anyway so Bickle said, “Miracles, Luke. Miracles were once the means to convince people to abandon reason for faith. But the miracles stopped during the rise of the neocortex and its industrial revolution. Tell me, if I could show you one miracle, would you come with me and join Mr. Kirkpatrick?”

I passed out again, and came to. He was still crouching beside me. He stood up, walked over to the battered refrigerator, and opened the door. Vapor poured out and I saw it was stocked with food. Bickle hunted around a bit, found something wrapped in paper, and took a bottle of beer from the door. Then he closed the fridge, sat down on the old tire, and unwrapped what looked like a turkey sandwich.

He said, “You could explain the fridge a few ways. One, there’s some hidden outlet, probably buried in the sand, that leads to a power source far away. I figure there’d have to be at least twenty miles of cable involved before it connected to the grid. That’s a lot of extension cord. Or, this fridge has some kind of secret battery system. If the empirical details didn’t bear this out, if you thoroughly studied the refrigerator and found neither a connection to a distant power source nor a battery, you might still argue that the fridge had some super-insulation capabilities and that the food inside had been able to stay cold since it was dragged out here. But say this explanation didn’t pan out either, and you observed the fridge staying the same temperature week after week while you opened and closed it. Then you’d start to wonder if it was powered by some technology beyond your comprehension. But pretty soon you’d notice something else about this refrigerator. The fact that it never runs out of food. Then you’d start to wonder if somehow it didn’t get restocked while you slept. But you’d realize that it replenished itself all the time, not just while you were sleeping. All this time, you’d keep eating from it. It would keep you alive out here in the middle of nowhere. And because of its mystery you’d begin to hate and fear it, and yet still it would feed you. Even though you couldn’t explain it, you’d still need it. And you’d assume that you simply didn’t understand the technology, rather than ascribe to it some kind of metaphysical power. You wouldn’t place your faith in the hands of some unknowable god. You’d place it in the technology itself. Finally, in frustration, you’d come to realize you’d exhausted your rationality and the only sensible thing to do would be to praise the mystery. You’d worship its bottles of Corona and jars of pickled beets. You’d make up prayers to the meats drawer and sing about its light bulb. And you’d start to accept the mystery as the one undeniable thing about it. That, or you’d grow so frustrated you’d push it off this cliff.”

“Is Mr. Kirkpatrick real?” I asked.

After a long gulp of beer, Bickle said, “That’s the neocortex talking again.
Ryan Boudinot
Metaphysics Quote #3

There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to attack metaphysics. We have no language—no syntax and no lexicon—which is alien to this history; we cannot utter a single destructive proposition which has not already slipped into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest.
Jacques Derrida
Metaphysics Quote #4

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
Samuel Butler
Metaphysics Quote #5

476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.
Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, Is there such a thing as a unicorn? and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?
477. So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist. - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite?
For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?
478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Metaphysics Quote #6

A balanced diet” is not so much about protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios. The real ratios to consider, at least for the typical American or European, are energy consumption/expenditure, pleasure/actual need, food/everything else.
Darrell Calkins
Metaphysics Quote #7

A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare
to the jeweled vision of a life started anew.
Aberjhani
Metaphysics Quote #8

A great physicist is always a metaphysicist as well; he has a higher concept of his knowledge and his task.
Ernst Jünger
Metaphysics Quote #9

A painting shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.
Amit Kalantri
Metaphysics Quote #10

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
H.L. Mencken
Metaphysics Quote #11

A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true.
Don DeLillo
Metaphysics Quote #12

A professor from UBC observed that he agreed with Alexander Pope about the ultimate unreality of evil. Seen from the highest point of metaphysics. To a rational mind, nothing bad ever really happens. He was talking high-minded balls. Twaddle! I thought. I said, 'Oh? Do you mean that every gas chamber has a silver lining?
Saul Bellow
Metaphysics Quote #13

A witch is a woman who emerges from deep within herself. She is a woman who has honestly explored her light and learned to celebrate her darkness. She is a woman who is able to fall in love with the magnificent possibilities of her power. She is a woman who radiates mystery. She is magnetic. She is a witch.
Dacha Avelin
Metaphysics Quote #14

About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror.

Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura.
Irving Howe
Metaphysics Quote #15

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Metaphysics Quote #16

All religions are good except when they try to resist nature.
Aniekee Tochukwu
Metaphysics Quote #17

All three explanations—eternal life, reincarnation, and nothingness—are descriptions of the same reality.
John K. Brown
Metaphysics Quote #18

All's a Oneness. There's nothing else.
Fakeer Ishavardas
Metaphysics Quote #19

Although each of us has the right to believe we are suffering, I suppose, there is a definite and ultimately essential distinction to be made between actual suffering, its cause and resolution, and invented or imagined suffering.
Darrell Calkins
Metaphysics Quote #20

And further, observing that all this indeterminate substance is in motion, and that no true predication can be made of that which changes, they supposed that it is impossible to make any true statement about that which is in all ways and entirely changeable. For it was from this supposition that there blossomed forth the most extreme view of those which we have mentioned, that of the professed followers of Heraclitus, and such as Cratylus held, who ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger; and who criticized Heraclitus for saying that one cannot enter the same river twice, for he himself held that it cannot be done even once.
Aristotle
Metaphysics Quote #21

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
HenriFrédéric Amiel
Metaphysics Quote #22

any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior and cognition must be the result of prior causes. This is because our brains obey the same laws of a cause and effect physical universe just like any other physical object. All events that occur in the universe are caused by antecedent events.

Quantum indeterminacy, which maintains that the state of a system does not determine a unique collection of values for all its measurable properties, is not a valid argument for free will and has been used incorrectly to justify beliefs of independent decision-making. Logically speaking, notions of randomness and indeterminism are actually additional arguments against free will. All events that occur at random in the universe are, by definition, not caused by antecedent events. Or to say it a different way, any random event cannot also be a willed event.

By the process of elimination, events that are “willed freely” are events that are neither determined nor random. In other words, in all likelihood events that are “willed freely” are events that simply do not exist.
Mark J. Solomon
Metaphysics Quote #23

Anyone who can relax, clear their mind, and envision being different in some way—such as more successful, funny, healthy, wealthy, or wise—can quantum jump. To initiate a quantum jump requires keeping an open mind that you can experience another reality. It is important that you are able to sincerely desire and feel a connection to another reality, envisioning some way of making a connection with it through a bridge, a door, a window or a handshake.
Cynthia Sue Larson
Metaphysics Quote #24

As humans, our territory is on land. If we were meant to control the skies, we would have been given wings, and if we were meant to control the seas and oceans, we would have been designed to breathe underwater. The Creator created for us many natural water sources: lakes, ponds, rivers, springs, and streams — so that we would not tamper with the seas or oceans. This is why there is salt in the them, so we do not drink from them, or bother the huge creatures he put there to control the food chain. The salt content found in huge bodies of water is extremely vital to the elevation and balancing of the earth. This can be explained through basic physics or metaphysics.

At the same time, wild creatures were also placed in jungles and forests to keep humans out of them. Plants are vital to purifying the atmosphere, and many wild animals rely on them as their food and medicine. Had the Creator not placed animals like tigers, wolves, bears, and other big creatures in untamed regions which are intended to remain inhabited, he knew that mankind would take over those areas — leaving nothing for the animals.
Suzy Kassem
Metaphysics Quote #25

As I’ve mentioned too often before, we are governed, and specifically our physicality is governed, by fairly strict rules, which are easily observable in nature. We have some freedom to manipulate some of these, but really not by very much. Everyone knows, or at least has the information, about the horrors of ignoring health issues and expecting your body to do what you want it to do with the least investment in it. Another “authority” telling you what you should do is not the answer.
Darrell Calkins
Metaphysics Quote #26

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.
Diogenes Laërtius
Metaphysics Quote #27

At one moment, his eyes sparkled in the light and in the next they were enshrouded in shadow. What connected those bands of light and dark? Could they indeed have been distinct entities?
Ashim Shanker
Metaphysics Quote #28

Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.
P.D. Ouspensky
Metaphysics Quote #29

Attitude is a state of mind that results in an action taken or an
emotion displayed. Attitude, in the end, is a motivator or that which
generates or reflects motives.
Reid A. Ashbaucher
Metaphysics Quote #30

Authenticity is not a metaphysically distinctive way of being human; it is just a way of taking responsibility for what one has already been given.
Peter E. Gordon

You May Also Like

Recent Posts

0 comments:

Post a Comment