Quotes About Maimonides

Maimonides, one of the few people in the Middle Ages to deny the validity of astrology, quoted the phrase "Israel has no star of fortune" in support of his argument, while others produced opposing opinions to back their views.

The controversy lay in determining the degree of freedom allowed. In contradistinction to this view, Maimonides held that divine providence was reserved only for certain exceptional individuals.

Maimonides agreed that anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Bible must not be interpreted literally, and tried to find rational reasons for some of the more irrational biblical laws. But he knew that religious experience transcended reason. The intuitive knowledge of the prophets, which was accompanied by tremulous awe, was of a higher order than the knowledge we acquire by our rational powers.

All this is applicable to the intellectual faculties of man. There is a considerable difference between one person and another as regards these faculties, as is well known to philosophers.

All attributes ascribed to God are attributes of His acts, and do not imply that God has any qualities.

Nature, like Maimonides said, is mainly a good place to throw beer cans on Sunday afternoons.

A small amount of wine such as three or four glasses is of benefit for the preservation of the health of human beings and an excellent remedy for most illnesses.

In view of the fact that Nachmanides helped to cultivate the Kabbalah, he became, as his commentary shows, a severe critic of Ibn Ezra, the outspoken opponent to the Jewish Medieval mysticism. It is Professor Schechter, who says of Nachmanides, when contrasting him with Maimonides, "If he was not a profound thinker like the author of the Guide of the Perplexed, he had that which is next best — he felt profoundly.

Transient bodies are only subject to destruction through their substance and not through their form, nor can the essence of their form be destroyed; in this respect they are permanent.

the wise.5 This view had been the fundamental feature of his image of the world and the basis of his conduct in life. It justified the structure of his economic existence. He could permit his livelihood to be assured by his brother's strenuous and dangerous work, so that Maimonides could devote himself to realizing his plans in peace and quiet. This view also had a place in his self-confidence and probably aroused a certain awareness of the relationship of providence to his own life.

The ultimate concept in Greek philosophy is the idea of cosmos, of order; the first teaching in the Bible is the idea of creation. Translated into eternal principles, cosmos means fate, while creation means freedom. The essential meaning of creation is not the idea that the universe was created at a particular moment in time. The essential meaning of creation is, as Maimonides explained, the idea that the universe did not come about by necessity but as a result of freedom.

So far, Maimonides had penned all his writings and letters in the Arabic which the Jews in Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and Persia were using at that time. However, like nearly all Jewish–Arabic authors, he employed the Hebrew alphabet.

Maimonides, the medieval writer, says you can try three times for a reconciliation before giving up and that's enough, then you can stop.

Our sages commanded that one should not teach one's daughter Torah because the minds of most women are incapable of concentrating on learning, and thus, because of their intellectual poverty, they turn the words of Torah into words of nonsense. Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, "Laws of Torah Study," 1:13

Maimonides likewise recommended immediate vomiting after consuming suspect food and praised rooster dung as one of the most effective means to bring this about. "It is said that excrements of roosters have a specific property to eliminate every poison by vomiting," he proclaimed.

Bit by bit they slipped back into their old strange talk. Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari, Philosophy, Spinoza, and other such nonsense which went in one ear and out the other.

the philosopher Moses Maimonides declared that the return to Israel was the only hope of an end to Jewish suffering at the hands of the Arabs, of whom he writes that 'Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.

Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom.

Those who believe that... detailed rules originate in a certain cause, are as far from the truth as those who assume that the whole law is useless.

According to Maimonides, one should always walk the King's Road, staying away from the extremes, neither surrendering completely to one's emotions nor rejecting them entirely.

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

Maimonides taught that it is better that 10 criminals go free than let one innocent man be executed. The Innocence Project represents that point of view.

You must consider, when reading this treatise, that mental perception, because connected with matter, is subject to conditions similar to those to which physical perception is subject.