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The Guide for the Perplexed QUOTES

The Guide for the Perplexed QUOTES

1 " Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

2 " Your purpose...should always be to know...the whole that was intended to be known. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

3 " The person who wishes to attain human perfection should study logic first, next mathematics, then physics, and, lastly, metaphysics. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

4 " The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

5 " We naturally like what we have been accustomed to, and are attracted towards it. [...] The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

6 " אל תחשוב שהסודות הגדולים האלה ידועים עד תכליתם וסופם לאחד מאתנו. לא! אלא שפעמים האמת מבהיקה לנו עד שאנו חושבים אותה לאור יום. אחרי-כן החומרים וההרגלים חוזרים ומסתירים אותה עד שאנו חוזרים להיות בלילה אפל, קרוב למה שהיינו בתחילה. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

7 " WHEN reading my present treatise, bear in mind that by "faith" we do not understand merely that which is uttered with the lips, but also that which is apprehended by the soul, the conviction that the object [of belief] is exactly as it is apprehended. If, as regards real or supposed truths, you content yourself with giving utterance to them in words, without apprehending them or believing in them, especially if you do not seek real truth, you have a very easy task as, in fact, you will find many ignorant people professing articles of faith without connecting any idea with them. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

8 " If God were corporeal, He would consist of atoms, and would not be one; or He would be comparable to other beings: but a comparison implies the existence of similar and of dissimilar elements, and God would thus not be one. A corporeal God would be finite, and an external power would be required to define those limits. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

9 " The definition of a thing includes its efficient cause; and since God is the Primal Cause, He cannot be defined, or described by a partial definition. A quality, whether psychical, physical, emotional, or quantitative, is always regarded as something distinct from its substratum; "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

10 " the laws remain undisturbed (ch. xxvii.). Apparent exceptions, the miracles, originate in these laws, although man is unable to perceive the causal relation. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

11 " The passage, “And He rested on the seventh day” (Exod. xx. 11) is interpreted as follows: On the seventh Day the forces and laws were complete, which during the previous six days were in the state of being established for the preservation of the Universe. They were not to be increased or modified. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

12 " here departs from his master, and holds that the spheres and the intellects had a beginning, and were brought into existence by the will of the Creator. He does not attempt to give a positive proof of his doctrine; all he contends is that the theory of the creatio ex nihilo is, from a philosophical point of view, not inferior to the doctrine which asserts the eternity of the universe, and that he can refute all objections advanced against his theory (ch. xiii.-xxviii.). "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

13 " According to Maimonides, the moral faculty would, in fact, not have been required, if man had remained a purely rational being. It is only through the senses that “the knowledge of good and evil” has become indispensable. The narrative of Adam’s fall is, according to Maimonides, an allegory representing the relation which exists between sensation, moral faculty, and intellect. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

14 " Maimonides was a zealous disciple of Aristotle, although the theory of the Kalām might seem to have been more congenial to Jewish thought and belief. The Kalām upheld the theory of God’s Existence, Incorporeality, and Unity, together with the creatio ex nihilo. Maimonides nevertheless opposed the Kalām, and, anticipating the question, why preference should be given to the system of Aristotle, which included the theory of the Eternity of the Universe, a theory contrary to the fundamental teaching of the Scriptures, he exposed the weakness of the Kalām and its fallacies. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

15 " You must know that it is very injurious to begin with this branch of philosophy, viz., Metaphysics; or to explain [at first] the sense of the similes occurring in prophecies, and interpret the metaphors which are employed in historical accounts and which abound in the writings of the Prophets. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

16 " They were presented in enigmas, clad in riddles, and taught by an wise men in the most mysterious way that could be devised, not because they contain some secret evil, or are contrary to the fundamental principles of the Law (as fools think who are only philosophers in their own eyes), but because of the incapacity of man to comprehend them at the beginning of his studies: "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

17 " This is self-evident. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

18 " Alexander Aphrodisius said that there are three causes which prevent men from discovering the exact truth: first, arrogance and vainglory; secondly, the subtlety, depth, and difficulty of any subject which is being examined; thirdly, ignorance and want of capacity to comprehend what might be comprehended. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

19 " As man’s distinction consists in a property which no other creature on earth possesses, viz., intellectual perception, in the exercise of which he does not employ his senses, nor move his hand or his foot, this perception has been compared—though only apparently, not in truth—to the Divine perception, which requires no corporeal organ. On this account, i.e., on account of the Divine intellect with which man has been endowed, he is said to have been made in the form and likeness of the Almighty, but far from it be the notion that the Supreme Being is corporeal, having a material form. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed

20 " Maimonides therefore undertook to compile a complete code, which would contain, in the language and style of the Mishnah, and without discussion, the whole of the Written and the Oral Law, all the precepts recorded in the Talmud, Sifra, Sifre and Tosefta, and the decisions of the Geonim. "

― Maimonides , The Guide for the Perplexed