Metaphysical Quotes - Page 2

• Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Nature, Truth

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1909). “The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of tragedy”

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• I think the metaphysical world is something Lisa and I have always been interested in. We were encouraged from a very young age to believe in magic. Our mom used to take us to fairy parties. As we got older, I was always very drawn to manifesting my own destiny...learning how to do spells and personal ritual.

  Jessica Origliasso

  Mom, Party, Believe

  Source: www.fuse.tv

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• Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science.

  Karl Popper

  Research, Facts, Evolution

  "Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography". Book by Karl Popper, 1976.

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• Why are there organized beings? Why is there something rather than nothing? Here again, I fully understand a scientist who refuses to ask it. He is welcome to tell me that the question does not make sense. Scientifically speaking, it does not. Metaphysically speaking, however, it does. Science can account for many things in the world; it may some day account for all that which the world of phenomena actually is. But why anything at all is, or exists, science knows not, precisely because it cannot even ask the question.

  Etienne Gilson

  Science, Understanding, Doe

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• THE ULTIMATE METAPHYSICAL SECRET, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two.

  Ken Wilber

  Reality, Two, Secret

  Ken Wilber (2001). “No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth”, p.30, Shambhala Publications

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• The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered. Reality is the original Rorschach. Verily! So much for all that.

  Malaclypse the Younger

  Reality, Rorschach, Definitions

  Malaclypse The Younger (2013). “Principia Discordia: The Magnum Opiate of, Malaclypse the Younger”, p.85, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I don’t know about ‘common sense opinion’ by the way. It seems to me that the office of common sense is to keep us from playing cards for high stakes with people we meet on trains, and not to endorse metaphysical opinions.

  Peter van Inwagen

  People, Common Sense, Office

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• Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

  Haruki Murakami

  Space, Doe, Taste

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jul 09, 2014

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• Metaphysical world.- It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Truth, Knowledge, Cutting

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.15, Cambridge University Press

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• Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Reality, Language, Harmony

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974). “Philosophical Grammar: Part I, The Proposition, and Its Sense, Part II, On Logic and Mathematics”, p.162, Univ of California Press

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• Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic.

  Hans Hofmann

  Art, Reality, Magic

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.40, MIT Press

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• The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.

  Aberjhani

  Motivational, Dream, Color

  Aberjhani (2014). “Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry”, p.65, Lulu.com

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• The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

  Theodor Adorno

  Reality, Order, Betrayed

  Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno (2002). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.35, Stanford University Press

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• It is in this mutual dependence of the functions and the aid which they reciprocally lend one another that are founded the laws which determine the relations of their organs and which possess a necessity equal to that of metaphysical or mathematical laws, since it is evident that the seemly harmony between organs which interact is a necessary condition of existence of the creature to which they belong and that if one of these functions were modified in a manner incompatible with the modifications of the others the creature could no longer continue to exist.

  Georges Cuvier

  Law, Harmony, Aids

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• It's this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what's it made of? It's made of neurons. It's made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.

  Daniel Dennett

  Giving, Soul, Robots

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• Animism is a monist metaphysical stance, based upon the idea that mind and matter are not distinct and separate substances but an integrated reality, rooted in nature.

  Emma Restall Orr

  Reality, Ideas, Mind

  Emma Restall Orr (2012). “The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature”, p.78, John Hunt Publishing

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• Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.

  Raymond Smullyan

  Confusion, Mind, Matter

  Raymond Smullyan (1983). “Five Thousand B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies”, p.84, Macmillan

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• Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Adequate, Interest

  Edmund Burke, James BURKE (Barrister-at-Law.) (1854). “The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, with Memoir and Historical Introductions. By James Burke”, p.115

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• The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization.

  Carl Schmitt

  Organization, Political, World

  "Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty", by Carl Schmitt, translated by George Schwab, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.

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• Metaphysics attempts to discover the ultimate nature of reality, and in this sense, the innerspace of science fiction is metaphysical fiction.

  Kate Wilhelm

  Reality, Fiction, Metaphysics

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• The Cabal is of two kinds, theoretical and practical, with the practical Cabala, which is engaged in the construction of talismans and amulets, we have nothing to do. The theoretical is divided into the lineal and dogmatic. The dogmatic is nothing more than the summary of the metaphysical doctrine taught by the Cabalist doctors. It is, in other words, the system of the Jewish philosophy.

  Albert Mackey

  Philosophy, Doctors, Two

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• I discovered suddenly that alienation, exploitation of man by man, under-nourishment, relegated to the background metaphysical evil which is a luxury.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Luxury, Evil

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• Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.

  Albert Camus

  Progress, Revolution, Rebellion

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.25, Vintage

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• I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.

  Madame de Stael

  Believe, Future, Years

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• Art's development should be dialectical and not metaphysical.

  Robert Smithson

  Art, Development, Should

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.155, Univ of California Press

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