Robert Grosseteste Quotes

Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former - Being - be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter - time - be addressed as a being.

The soul is neither inside nor outside the body; neither proximate to nor separate from it.

We might be allowed to... assert that because our only cognitions of matter are cognitions of force, matter in the scientific sense is force.

It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from asbsolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality?

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness.

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived.

Historically, the East was more concerned with understanding the mind and the West was more involved in understanding matter.

The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image.

Form and formless are intertwined in this world. The formless can only be expressed in form and form can only be thought with the formless.

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

I describe in a realistic form a nonrealistic Reality.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job? If you do not remember this, You will get lost, No matter how intelligent you are. It is the great secret.

It must be understood that prime matter, and form as well, is neither generated nor corrupted, because every generation is from something to something. Now that from which generation proceeds is matter, and that to which it proceeds is form. So that, if matter or form were generated, there would be a matter for matter and a form for form, endlessly. Whence, there is generation only of the composite, properly speaking.

Every form of strength is also a form of weakness.

The way Kathy Lee needs Regis, that's the way I need Jesus.

Among the great things which are found among us the existence of Nothing is the greatest.

But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.

I chose philosophy because it sounded like something I ought to be interested in. I didn't know anything about it, I didn't even know what it was talking about. What I really spent my time doing in those years was writing short stories. There were all sorts of interesting courses, but what I really wanted to do was make stories one way or another.

Being is the soul of every concept, of every judgment and of every reasoning.

What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.

The difference between physics and metaphysics is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioners of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.