“Indeed, the drunken man while in that condition does not know the definition of drunkenness nor the scientific account of it; he has not the very least scientific knowledge of it. The sober man, on the other hand, knows the definition of drunkenness and its basis, yet he is not drunk in the very least. Again the doctor, when he is himself ill, knows the definition and causes of health and the remedies which restore it, and yet is lacking in health. Similarly there is a difference between knowing the true nature and causes and conditions of the ascetic life and actually leading such a life and forsaking the world.”

The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Indeed, the drunken man while in that condition does not know the definition of drunkenness nor the scientific account …" by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali?
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali photo
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali 37
Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic 1058–1111

Related quotes

Richelle Mead photo
Henry Fielding photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
C.G. Jung photo
George Hendrik Breitner photo

“That painting with that man - that drunken man - was first a soup-distribution [on the streets], which I had seen, and for which I also made those studies of which you speak. Also failed; simply due to lack of perseverance. I have made another drawing of it, which V. Wisselingh found quite good and he afterwards sold to an American, and he does not know where it has gone.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Dat schilderij met die man, die dronken man was eerst een soep-uitdeeling, die ik gezien had, en waarvoor ik ook die studies gemaakt heb, waarover je spreekt. Ook mislukt, eenvoudig door gebrek aan doorzetten. Ik heb nog wel een teekening van gemaakt, die V. Wisselingh nogal goed vond en naderhand aan een Amerikaan heeft verkocht, en niet weet waar gebleven is”, aldus Breitner.
In Breitner's letter to Jan Veth, 1901, RKD Den Haag; as cited in Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 67
1900 - 1923

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1345. Drunkenness turns a Man out of himself, and leaves a Beast in his room.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Walter A. Shewhart photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

Preface, The importance of hell in the salvation scheme
Source: 1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)
Context: The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

Ralph Venning photo

“He accounts himself lesse then the least of all mercies; and yet he looks on the greatest as his due.”

Ralph Venning (1621–1673) English minister

"The Triumph of Assurance", Orthodox Paradoxes, Or, A Believer Clearing Truth by Seeming Contradictions (1647), p. 48-49.

Philip K. Dick photo

“We'll know homo superior when he comes — by definition. He'll be the one we won't be able to euth.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Source: The Golden Man (1954)

Related topics