Anselm of Canterbury Quotes

I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.

If you prove the cause, you at once prove the effect; and conversely nothing can exist without its cause.

What is meant by cause? Cause is the fine state of the manifested state.

Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless.

Everything, both mental and physical, is rigidly bound by the law of causation.

... causes (pains) are not logical constructions out of their effects (behaviour).

Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.

If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation.

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

All is bound by the law of causation

Anything that happens, happens.

If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.

Events do not really have beginnings or ends. Behind every event is the previous one, causing, or helping to cause, what follows.

A CAUSE is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.

I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain.

This is what writers mean when they say that the notion of cause involves the idea of necessity. If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things.

I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.

We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.

Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'we exist because we exist. . .we could imagine all sorts of universes like this one, but this is the one that happened.

As the cause is, so the effect will be.

Everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation.

Either in or out of time, the decision of a personal agency to commit an action happens antecedent to the action itself. Even if the deciding and the acting happened simultaneously, it would still not be true that the acting was antecedent to the deciding. Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a universe. Now I'd better decide to do it.

Tis evident that all reasonings concerning matter of fact are founded on the relation of cause and effect, and that we can never infer the existence of one object from another, unless they be connected together, either mediately or immediately... Here is a billiard ball lying on the table, and another ball moving toward it with rapidity. They strike; and the ball which was formerly at rest now acquires a motion. This is as perfect an instance of the relation of cause and effect as any which we know, either by sensation or reflection.