"Inconceivability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to ask, How much does this inconceivability signify? In most cases, when we say that a statement is inconceivable, we practically declare it to be untrue; when we say that a statement is without warrant in experience, we plainly indicate that we consider ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... incessant changes, immutable only in the law of its own mutability; for these two systems may be regarded as the type of all subsequent attempts. Both, however, alike aim at an object which is beyond positive conception, and which can be accepted only as something to be believed in spite of its inconceivability. To conceive an existence beyond the first moment of time, and to connect that existence as cause with the subsequent temporal succession of effects, we must conceive time itself as non-existent and then commencing to exist. But when we make the effort ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... inconceivable, each the mere negation of thought. On the one hand, we are told they differ; on the other, we are told they do not differ. Now which does Hamilton mean? If he insist upon the definitions as yielding a ground of conceivable difference, he must abandon the inconceivability; but if he insist upon the inconceivability, he must abandon the definition as sheer verbiage, devoid of all conceivable meaning. There is no possible escape from this dilemma. Further, two negations can never contradict; for contradiction ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... it set up a purely subjective standard of truth, and a standard—as he was easily able to show—varying according to the psychological history of the individual. Such thinkers as Dr. Whewell and Mr. Herbert Spencer had to be met in intellectual combat. Dr. Whewell held, not that the inconceivability of the contradictory of a proposition is a proof of its truth co-equal with experience, but that its value transcends experience. Experience may tell us what is; but it is by the impossibility of conceiving it otherwise that we know it must be. Mr. Herbert Spencer, ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... 'Convinced, Arthur, of its inconceivability. But if you would kindly inform me what precise formula you followed at Widderstone last night, I would tell you why I think the explanation, or rather your first account of the matter, is not an explanation of ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare |
