Avicenna Quotes

Avicenna on Death

• “An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.”

  As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice B. Strauss

Avicenna on God

• Attributed to Avicenna:

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

• “God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.”

  As quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

Avicenna on Happiness

• Attributed to Avicenna:

  “Be content with what you have, in order to live in peace.”

• Attributed to Avicenna:

  “He whose soul is at rest needs no more.”

Avicenna on Knowledge

• Attributed to Avicenna:

  “Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and, when lost, is likely to be restored.”

• Attributed to Avicenna:

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

• “On Medicine, ( c . 1020)”

  The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes , is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and diseas

• “Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.”

  Metaphysics , Book I

• “Metaphysics , Book I”

  Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.

• “Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health.”

  As quoted in The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World, 610-2003 (2006), by Hunt Janin, p. 75.

Read all Avicenna quotes on Knowledge

Avicenna on Life

• “I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length.”

  As quoted in Avicenna (Ibn Sina): Muslim Physician And Philosopher of the Eleventh Century (2006), by Aisha Khan p. 85, which cites Genius of Arab Civilizations by M.A. Martin.

Avicenna on Mind

• Attributed to Avicenna:

  “Whoever has, throughout his life, observed the impressions on his soul made by his loves and hatreds, his desires and aversions, will not doubt that the soul is something other than the body.”