“These sublime and profound themes admit of no proof whatever… In all questions that cannot be demonstrated, we must adopt the method which we have adopted in this question about God's Omniscience. Note it.”

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.21
Context: He fully knows His unchangeable essence, and has thus a knowledge of all that results from any of His acts. If we were to try to understand in what manner this is done, it would be the same as if we tried to be the same as God, and to make our knowledge identical with His knowledge. Those who seek the truth, and admit what is true, must believe that nothing is hidden from God; that everything is revealed to His knowledge, which is identical with His essence; that this kind of knowledge cannot be comprehended by us; for if we knew its method, we would possess that intellect by which such knowledge could be acquired.... Note this well, for I think that this is an excellent idea, and leads to correct views; no error will be found in it; no dialectical argument; it does not lead to any absurd conclusion, nor to ascribing any defect to God. These sublime and profound themes admit of no proof whatever... In all questions that cannot be demonstrated, we must adopt the method which we have adopted in this question about God's Omniscience. Note it.

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 "These sublime and profound themes admit of no proof whatever… In all questions that cannot be demonstrated, we must ado…" by Maimónides?
Maimónides photo
Maimónides 180
rabbi, physician, philosopher 1138–1204

Related quotes

Maimónides photo

“The philosophers have uttered very perverse ideas as regards God's Omniscience of everything besides Himself; they have stumbled in such a manner that they cannot rise again, nor can those who adopt their views.”

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.16
Context: The philosophers have uttered very perverse ideas as regards God's Omniscience of everything besides Himself; they have stumbled in such a manner that they cannot rise again, nor can those who adopt their views.... They continued thus: If he perceives and knows all individual things, one of the following three cases must take place: (1.) God arranges and manages human affairs well, perfectly, and faultlessly; (2.) He is overcome by obstacles, and is too weak and powerless to manage human affairs; (3.) He knows [all things] and can arrange and manage them, but leaves and abandons them, as too base, low, and vile... Those who have a knowledge of a certain thing necessarily either (1.) take care of the thing they know, and manage it, or (2.) neglect it; or (3.) while taking care of it, have not sufficient power and strength for its management, although they have the will to do so.... the philosophers emphatically decided that of the three cases... two are inadmissible in reference to God—viz., want of power, or absence of will... Consequently there remains only the alternative that God is altogether ignorant of human affairs, or that He knows them and manages them well.... we conclude that God has no knowledge of them in any way of for any reason. This is the argument which led philosophers to speak such blasphemous words.

William H. Seward photo

“Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it. For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

Memorandum to President Abraham Lincoln (1 April 1861).

William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.

Maimónides photo
Georges Cuvier photo

“It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.”

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist (1769–1832)

as stated in 1796 before the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in Paris, concerning fossil elephants.

Deng Xiaoping photo
Archimedes photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”

Religion and Science (1935), Ch. IX: Science of Ethics.
1930s
Variant: "What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know." (Attributed to Russell in Ted Peters' Cosmos As Creation: Theology and Science in Consonance [1989], p. 14, with a note that it was "told [to] a BBC audience [earlier this century]").

Related topics