CAUSE

Related Subjects: Beginning, Consequences, Controversy, Motive, Necessity, Purpose, Reason, Responsibility

1. Anaximander used to assert that the primary cause of all things was the Infinite,—not defining exactly whether he meant air or water or anything else.—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Anaximander
   

2. Whatever is, is in its causes just.—DRYDEN, Oedipus
   

3. I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.—JONATHAN EDWARDS, The Freedom of the Will
   

4. Physical science (i.e. physics), together with astronomy and chemistry and mineralogy, are all based on the strict and universal validity of the principle of causality.—PROF. MAX PLANCK

5. To infer a creator is to infer a cause, and causal inferences are only admissable in science when they proceed from observed causal laws. Creation out of nothing is an occurrence which has not been observed. There is, therefore, no better reason to suppose that the world was caused by a Creator than to suppose that it was uncaused; either equally contradicts the causal laws that we can observe.—BERTRAND RUSSELL
   

6. Every why bath a wherefore.—SHAKESPEARE, The Comedy of Errors
   

7. Find out the cause of this effect,
   Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
   For this effect defective comes by cause.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
   

8. Every cause produces more than one effect.—HERBERT SPENCER, Essays on Education
   

9. Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.—SPINOZA, Ethics
   

10. Man thinks himself free because he is conscious of his wishes and appetites, whilst at the same time he is ignorant of the causes by which he is led to wish and desire, not dreaming what they are.—SPINOZA, Ethics
    

11. Everything has a cause and the cause of anything is everything.—W. J. TURNER
    Cause in the sense of principle
    

12. It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr.—NAPOLEON
    

13. There must in every cause be some first Martyr
    To suffer and to fall;
    There must be also those content to barter
    Their victory for their all.—JOHN M. NEALE, Abraham Lincoln
    

14. It is an ill cause that the lawyer thinks shame o'.—Proverb
    

15. It is a bad cause, that none dares speak in.—Proverb
    

16. He that has the worst cause makes the most noise.—Proverb
    

17. Report me and my cause aright.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet