Giovanni Pico della Mirandola quotes

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance philosopher and scholar renowned for his work on human potential and dignity. His "Oration on the Dignity of Man" is famous for articulating the limitless possibilities of human achievement through free will. He became a central figure in the development of Renaissance humanism and the promotion of intellectual freedom. Here are 18 of his quotes:

But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

But in its final creation it was not the part of the Father's power to fail as though exhausted. It was not the part of His wisdom to waver in a needful matter through poverty of counsel.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

God the Father, the supreme Architect, had already built this cosmic home we behold, the most sacred temple of His godhead, by the laws of His mysterious wisdom.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

For why should we not admire more the angels themselves and the blessed choirs of heaven?

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Admittedly great though these reasons be, they are not the principal grounds, that is, those which may rightfully claim for themselves the privilege of the highest admiration.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

At last the best of artisans ordained that that creature to whom He had been able to give nothing proper to himself should have joint possession of whatever had been peculiar to each of the different kinds of being.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

And if, happy in the lot of no created thing, he withdraws into the center of his own unity, his spirit, made one with God, in the solitary darkness of God, who is set above all things, shall surpass them all.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Nor can anyone rightly choose his own doctrine from all, unless he has first made himself familiar with all of them. Moreover, there is in each school something distinctive, which it has not in common with any other.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

If you see a man dedicated to his stomach, crawling on the ground, you see a plant and not a man; or if you see a man bedazzled by the empty forms of the imagination, as by the wiles of Calypso, and through their alluring solicitations made a slave to his own senses, you see a brute and not a man. If, however, you see a philosopher, judging and distinguishing all things according to the rule of reason, him shall you hold in veneration, for he is a creature of heaven and not of earth; if, finally, a pure contemplator, unmindful of the body, wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind, here indeed is neither a creature of earth nor a heavenly creature, but some higher divinity, clothed in human flesh.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

This much will I say for myself - and on this point I do not blush for praising myself - that I have never philosophized save for the sake of philosophy, nor have I ever desired or hoped to secure from my studies and my laborious researches any profit or fruit save cultivation of mind and knowledge of the truth - things I esteem more and more with the passage of time. I have also been so avid for this knowledge and so enamored of it that I have set aside all private and public concerns to devote myself completely to contemplation; and from it no calumny of jealous persons, nor any invective from enemies of wisdom has ever been able to detach me.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Thus we have reached the point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Philosophy has taught me to rely on my own convictions rather than on the judgements of others and to concern myself less with whether I am well thought of than whether what I do or say is evil.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

It was not the part of His kindly love that he who was to praise God's divine generosity in regard to others should be compelled to condemn it in regard to himself.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola