Maimonides
Maimonides (1135-1204), full name Moses ben Maimon, was a Spanish Hebrew philosopher and physician born in Spain and migrated to Egypt. He was a leading intellectual of medieval Judaism. In Egypt, he became physician to Saladin, the then Sultan of Egypt. He also became head of Jewish community there. He wrote mainly in Arabic and advocated reconciliation between strict rabbinical Judaism and Aristotelian philosophy.Wisdom & Quote
- Anticipate charity by preventing poverty.
- The great sickness and the grievous evil consist in this : that all the things that man finds written in books, he presumes to think of as true - and all the more so if the books are old.
- All attributes ascribed to God are attributes of His acts, and do not imply that God has any qualities.
- Every ignoramus imagines that all that exists, exists with a view to his individual sake; it is as if there were nothing that exists except him. And if something happens to him that is contrary to what he wishes, he makes the trenchant judgement that all that exists is an evil.
- If one avoids haughtiness to the utmost extent and is exceedingly humble, he is termed a saint, and this is the standard of saintliness.
- Just as a person is commanded to honour and revere his father, so he is under an obligation to honour and revere his teacher, even to a greater extent than his father; for his father gave him life in this world, while his teacher instructs him in wisdom, secures for him life in the world to come.
Saladin