The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.
Alan WattsRead
Living creatures possess a moving soul and a certain spiritual superiority which in this respect make them similar to those who possess intellect (people) and they have the power of affecting their welfare and their food and they flee from pain and death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the spiritual and intellectual similarities between living creatures and humans.
Nahmanides emphasizes the idea that all living beings share a soul and a sense of spirituality, leading to a similarity with humans. This shared essence grants animals the ability to seek their own welfare and escape from suffering, suggesting a profound interconnectedness between all forms of life.
Themes
SoulSpiritsCreaturesIntellectWelfarePainDeath
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about animal rights, one might quote Nahmanides to highlight the spiritual nature of all living beings.
Similar quotes
Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
Colin PowellRead
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight D. EisenhowerRead
Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.
Francis SchaefferRead
Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.
Jose MartiRead
Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis StevensonRead