Ralph Cudworth Quotes
Ralph Cudworth was an English philosopher, theologian, and the leading figure of the Cambridge Platonist school. As Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, he produced The True Intellectual System of the Universe, a vast defense of theism, the immateriality of the soul, and the eternal and immutable nature of right and wrong against what he took to be the materialism and ethical relativism of Hobbes and his followers. The quotes below are attributed to Ralph Cudworth, organized by topic.
Browse Ralph Cudworth by topic
Ralph Cudworth on God
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Attributed to Ralph Cudworth:
“Without God, the moral order is unintelligible.”
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Attributed to Ralph Cudworth:
“The wise see God in everything; the foolish see nothing of him at all.”
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“The best assurance any one can have of his interest in God, is doubtless the conformity of his soul to Him. When our heart is once turned into a conformity with the mind of God. when we feel our will conformed to His will, we shall then presently perceive a spirit of adoption within ourselves, teaching us to say, "Abba, Father.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 16
Ralph Cudworth on Knowledge
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“The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.”
Ch. 5, sct. 7 -
“Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigour and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.”
Ch. 1, sct. 1 -
“If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us.”
Ch. 1, sct. 3
Ralph Cudworth on Mind
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Attributed to Ralph Cudworth:
“Mind is older than matter.”
Ralph Cudworth on Nature
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“Truth is the most unbending and uncompliable, the most necessary, firm, immutable, and adamantine thing in the world.”
Ch. 5, sct. 3
Ralph Cudworth on Virtue
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Attributed to Ralph Cudworth:
“Things are good or evil by their nature, and not by mere will.”
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Attributed to Ralph Cudworth:
“Right and wrong are not the products of will, but the eternal and immutable nature of things.”