School

Islamic Philosophy quotes

Islamic philosophy names the classical falsafa tradition and related theological-philosophical debate across the Islamic world.

Overview

Figures such as al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and al-Ghazali debate intellect, prophecy, causation, and the relation of philosophy to revelation. The archive gathers English renderings with honest confidence marks when Arabic originals are not transcribed.

Historical notes

From the translation movement through Andalusian Aristotelianism and later critiques, Islamic philosophy shaped Jewish and Latin scholastic thought as well as its own lineages.

Core ideas

  • Philosophy and prophecy can be ordered without collapsing into each other.
  • Metaphysics of being and intellect remains central (especially Avicenna).
  • Demonstrative science has norms that rhetoric and dialectic do not replace.
  • Critique of the philosophers is itself a philosophical act (al-Ghazali and responses).

Thinkers in this archive

Al-Ghazali , Ibn Khaldun , Averroes , Al-Farabi , Avicenna , Ibn Tufayl

FAQ

What is Islamic philosophy?

It is the philosophical tradition developed in Islamic civilizations, often engaging Greek sources alongside Qur’anic and legal discourse.

Who are key Islamic philosophers?

Common entry points include al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, al-Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Khaldun.

Where can I find Islamic philosophy quotes?

This page collects verified English passages from the archive’s Islamic Philosophy school label.

  1. Knowledge without action is vanity, and action without knowledge is madness.
  2. Man is a child of customs, not of his ancestors.
  3. Certainty is not attained by imitation, but by tasting (direct experience).
  4. Truth does not contradict truth; rather it agrees with it and bears witness to it.
  5. The soul has health and sickness just as the body has health and sickness.
  6. The health of the soul is for its traits to be traits by which it does good, fine, and noble actions.
  7. The excellent city is the one in which people cooperate toward the things by which true happiness is attained.
  8. Happiness is the good desired for its own sake; it is never desired for the sake of something else.
  9. The statesman and the king are like the physician: they seek the health of the city as the physician seeks the health of the body.
  10. Political science inquires into the kinds of voluntary actions and ways of life, and into the happiness that is the end of the human being.
  11. Suppose a person were created at once, fully mature, but with sight veiled and limbs outstretched so that he touched nothing; he would affirm his own existence without affirming any body.
  12. The Necessary Existent has no cause; rather, It is the cause of all that is possible.
  13. The knowledge of anything that has causes is not complete unless it is known through its causes.
  14. The soul is a substance; it is not a body, nor is it impressed in a body as a form in matter in the way of bodily forms.
  15. The first of intelligibles is the grasp of existence; from it the mind proceeds to the necessary and the possible.
  16. Prophecy is a perfection of the human intellect joined to a power of imagination that receives and expresses what the intellect knows.
  17. Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and restored.
  18. Wisdom is the companion of the Law and its milk-sister.
  19. The Law has obliged us to reflect upon existing things by means of the intellect, and to seek knowledge of them from that perspective.
  20. If the apparent sense of a scriptural text conflicts with demonstration, that apparent sense admits of allegorical interpretation.
  21. The Law has urged us to observe beings and directed us to seek knowledge of them by means of demonstration.
  22. To deny that things have natures and that from similar natures similar effects follow is to abolish reason and science together.
  23. Assent is of three kinds: rhetorical, dialectical, and demonstrative; people differ in nature as to which kind persuades them.
  24. The connection between what is usually believed to be a cause and what is believed to be an effect is not necessary; each of the two has its own individuality.
  25. Sense-data are not a secure foundation; the eye sees the star as small, yet demonstration shows it larger than the earth.
  26. Beyond the intellect there is another stage in which another eye is opened, by which one sees the unseen and what will be in the future.
  27. Knowledge is not perfected by learning alone; it is perfected when it becomes a state that moves the limbs to action.
  28. Know yourself, for the knowledge of the self is the key to the knowledge of God.
  29. By unaided reason Hayy rose to knowledge of the Necessary Existent, before any human teacher reached him.
  30. What revelation teaches by symbols, the philosopher may reach by demonstration; the two agree in substance for those who understand.
  31. Most people cling to the outer forms of worship; to strip those forms away suddenly only harms them.
  32. Solitude became for him a ladder: withdrawing from the senses, he turned inward toward the Truth.
  33. Royal authority and large-scale dynastic power are attained only through group feeling (ʿaṣabiyya).
  34. History is a discipline that has a large number of approaches. Its useful aspects are very many. Its goal is distinguished.
  35. The past resembles the future more than one drop of water another.
  36. When luxury and sedentary culture take hold, group feeling weakens and the dynasty declines.