Metaphysical Questions Quotes & Sayings

One of the most often posed questions I receive from clients and readers is: "Why is there so much evil in the world? Why is there so much violence and hate?"
The answer is simple. Because we've forgotten who we are and why we are here on this planet.
That answer may sound like the preface to some airy-fairy metaphysical book, but it's not. Understanding who we are is essential to living a balanced life. I am talking, of course, about the human soul. — Cassandra Blizzard

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity. — Desmond Tutu

I think that when a film does its job, it poses questions rather than gives answers. It should act as a frustrating counselor who, at your bidding for advice, says, 'What do you think?' I think that's some of what the culture critic Greg Tate meant by art leaving a 'metaphysical stain.' — Aunjanue Ellis

I prefer a thief to a Congressman. A thief will take your money and be on his way, but a Congressman will stand there and bore you with the reasons why he took it. — Walter E. Williams

Philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, — Ayn Rand

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that. — C.S. Lewis

A Doll's House is about money, about the way it turns locks. — Elizabeth Hardwick

A person who is asleep is either lost in deep unconsciousness or absorbed in a dream. Metaphorically, this was how the Buddha must have seen both his previous self as well as everyone else he had known: they either were blind to the questions of existence or sought consolation from them in metaphysical or religious fantasies. — Stephen Batchelor

Since language is used for communicating thought, our view of language must also reflect our new understanding of the nature of thought. Language is at once a surface phenomenon and a source of power. It is a means of expressing, communicating, accessing, and even shaping thought. Words are defined relative to frames and conceptual metaphors. — George Lakoff

Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'. — D.R. Khashaba

. . . [T]o live in an inspired condition, to know truth, to be free, to love another, to consummate existence, to abide with death in clarity of consciousness - without which, racing and conniving to evade death, the spirit holds its breath and hopes to be immortal because it does not live - is no longer a rarefied project. Just as machinery has embodied ideas of good, so the technology of destruction has also acquired a metaphysical character. The practical questions have thus become the ultimate questions as well. Annihilation is no longer a metaphor. Good and Evil are real. The inspired condition is therefore no visionary matter. It is not reserved for gods, kings, poets, priests, shrines, but belongs to mankind and to all of existence. — Saul Bellow

Ceilings must always be considered. They are the most neglected surface in a room. — Albert Hadley

I find a lot of comfort and peace just being outdoors. Whether on a beach or on a path near our house, I would walk for an hour or two, just alone with my own head to think things through. — Meredith Vieira

If I could have all of those things, I wouldn't mind if I touched her or not. — Nick Hornby

I don't like to feel like I'm in a club when I'm in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out. — Taylor Swift

Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk. — Fran Lebowitz

Metaphysical ghosts cannot be killed, because they cannot be touched; but they may be dispelled by dispelling the twilight in which shadows and solidities are easily confounded. The Vital Principle is an entity of this ghostly kind; and although the daylight has dissipated it, and positive Biology is no longer vexed with its visitations, it nevertheless reappears in another shape in the shadowy region of mystery which surrounds biological and all other questions. — George Henry Lewes

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I grew up in a very Jewish neighbourhood and thought the whole world was like that. My parents were secular, but I went to a very Orthodox Jewish school, and I really got into it. I found it all fascinating, and I was just kind of really attracted to the metaphysical questions. — Larry Charles