History of Western Philosophy

What is the difference between “knowledge” and “opinion”? The man who has knowledge has knowledge of something, that is to say, of something that exists, for what does not exist is nothing. (This is reminiscent of Parmenides.) Thus knowledge is infallible, since it is logically impossible for it to be mistaken. But opinion can be mistaken.

What seems like sudden insight may be misleading, and must be tested soberly when the divine intoxication has passed.

The soul is like an eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence.

Time and the heavens came into existence at the same instant. God made the sun so that animals could learn arithmetic—without the succession of days and nights, one supposes, we should not have thought of numbers. The sight of day and night, months and years, has created knowledge of number and given us the conception of time, and hence came philos

The defects of the scholastic method are those that inevitably result from laying stress on “dialectic.” These defects are: indifference to facts and science, belief in reasoning in matters which only observation can decide, and an undue emphasis on verbal distinctions and subtleties.

Propositions about future contingents, according to Occam, are not yet either true or false. He makes no attempt to reconcile this view with divine omniscience. Here, as elsewhere, he keeps logic free from metaphysics and theology.

The Medici family, who ultimately became the rulers of Florence, began as political bosses on the democratic side. Cosimo dei Medici (1389-1464), the first of the family to achieve clear pre-eminence, still had no official position; his power depended upon skill in manipulating elections.

revenge is a very dangerous motive. In so far as society admits it, it allows a man to be the judge in his own case, which is exactly what the law tries to prevent. Moreover it is usually an excessive motive; it seeks to inflict more punishment than is desirable.

“the free man thinks of nothing less than of death.”

The changes in a human body (in ordinary circumstances) happen for the sake of the dominant monad: when my arm moves, the purpose served by the movement is in the dominant monad, i.e., my mind, not in the monads that compose my arm. This is the truth of what appears to common sense as the control of my will over my arm.