34 Quotes by Avicenna

Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.

I despised my arrival on this earth and I despise my departure; it is a tragedy.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.

Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health.

That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.

Pure earth does not petrify, because the predominance of dryness over [i.e. in] the earth endows it not with coherence but rather with crumbliness. In general, stone is formed in two ways only (a) through the hardening of clay, and (b) by the congelation [of waters].