On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy Quotes

“until the interview with the Prince Ibn Rushd was unaware of his favourable interest in philosophy, and feared some harsh penalty if he himself were known to be occupied in such a study.”
― George F. Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy: A Translation with Introduction and Notes of Ibn Rushd's Kitab Fasl Al-Maqal with Its Appendix, (Damima) ... Al-Adilla (EJW GIBB MEMORIAL SERIES

“there is a sense of loneliness: the philosophers are called “weeds” (nawābit), like the grass that springs up among the crops; they are strangers in their own country,”
― George F. Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy: A Translation with Introduction and Notes of Ibn Rushd's Kitab Fasl Al-Maqal with Its Appendix, (Damima) ... Al-Adilla (EJW GIBB MEMORIAL SERIES

“There is little use in asking for an explanation of the eighty years’ gap: the man for the occasion did not appear sooner, and might never have appeared. When he did, however, the challenge of Ghazālī was still felt to be a live issue; intellectual evolution was slower in those days. In Ibn Rushd's criticisms of Ghazālī we perceive a bantering animosity which treats “Abū Hāmid” almost as a living contemporary.”
― George F. Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy: A Translation with Introduction and Notes of Ibn Rushd's Kitab Fasl Al-Maqal with Its Appendix, (Damima) ... Al-Adilla (EJW GIBB MEMORIAL SERIES

“we may say that whenever a statement in Scripture conflicts in its apparent meaning with a conclusion of demonstration, if Scripture is considered carefully, 5 and the rest of its contents searched page by page, there will invariably be found among the expressions of Scripture something which in its apparent meaning bears witness to that allegorical interpretation67 or comes close to bearing witness.”
― George F. Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy: A Translation with Introduction and Notes of Ibn Rushd's Kitab Fasl Al-Maqal with Its Appendix, (Damima) ... Al-Adilla (EJW GIBB MEMORIAL SERIES

“it is clear that in the study of beings this aim can be fulfilled by us perfectly only through successive examinations of them by one man after another,41 the later ones seeking the help of the earlier in that task, on the model of what has happened in the mathematical sciences. For if we suppose that the art of geometry did not exist in this age of ours, and likewise the art of astronomy, and a single person wanted to ascertain by himself the sizes of the 15 heavenly bodies, their shapes, and their distances from each other, that would not be possible for him—e.g. to know the proportion of the sun to the earth or other facts about the sizes of the stars—even though he were the most intelligent of men by nature, unless by a revelation or something resembling revelation.42 Indeed if he were told that the sun is about 150 or 160 times43 as great as the earth, he would think this statement madness on the part of the speaker, although this is a fact which has been demonstrated in 20 astronomy so surely that no one who has mastered that science doubts it.”
― George F. Hourani, Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy: A Translation with Introduction and Notes of Ibn Rushd's Kitab Fasl Al-Maqal with Its Appendix, (Damima) ... Al-Adilla (EJW GIBB MEMORIAL SERIES