Avicenna, or Ibn Sina, was a polymath who made significant contributions to various fields, including philosophy, medicine, and science, during the Islamic Golden Age. Born in 980 CE near Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan, he is most renowned for his monumental works in medicine, particularly “The Canon of Medicine” (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb). This encyclopedia of medical knowledge became a standard medical text at many medieval universities, significantly influencing both Eastern and Western medicine. Avicenna’s Canon synthesized the medical knowledge of the time, including Greek, Roman, and Islamic medicine, and introduced systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology. He also made notable contributions to philosophy, particularly in metaphysics and the philosophy of science. His works blend Aristotelian philosophy with Neoplatonic ideas, significantly impacting medieval thought in both the Islamic world and Europe. Avicenna’s legacy as a scientist, philosopher, and physician demonstrates his profound influence on the development of medical and philosophical thought through the centuries.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) Quotes
1. “There are no incurable diseases – only the lack of will. There are no worthless herbs – only the lack of knowledge.”
— Avicenna
2. “Width of life is more important than length of life.”
— Avicenna
3. “The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”
— Avicenna
4. “The more brilliant the lightning, the quicker it disappears.”
— Avicenna
5. “Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness?”
— Avicenna
6. “An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.”
— Avicenna
7. “As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.”
— Avicenna
8. “A horse is simply a horse.”
— Avicenna
9. “When you do not know the nature of the malady, leave it to nature; do not strive to hasten matters. For either nature will bring about the cure or it will itself reveal clearly what the malady really is.”
— Avicenna
10. “The different sorts of madness are innumerable.”
— Avicenna
11. “Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.”
— Avicenna
12. “That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence.”
— Avicenna
13. “The physical signs of measles are nearly the same as those of smallpox, but nausea and inflammation is more severe, though the pains in the back are less.”
— Avicenna
14. “Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health.”
— Avicenna
15. “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.”
— Avicenna
16. “Leeches should be kept a day before applying them. They should be squeezed to make them eject the contents of their stomachs.”
— Avicenna
17. “When a thing standeth long in salt, it is salt, and if any thing stand in a stinking place, it is made stinking; and if any thing standeth with a bold man, it is made bold, and if it stand with a fearefull man, it is made fearefull.”
— Avicenna
18. “Science and art leave societies in which they are not respected Avicenna.”
— Avicenna
