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Let Sadness do what happiness does, for surely if left unoccupied, Sadness will have no choice but to be.
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Listen to a special audio message from Bill Roper to the Hive Workshop community (Bill is a former Vice President of Blizzard Entertainment, Producer, Designer, Musician, Voice Actor) 🔗Click here to hear his message!
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Read Evilhog's interview with Gregory Alper, the original composer of the music for WarCraft: Orcs & Humans 🔗Click here to read the full interview.
Daily Wisdom
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Map Reviewer
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- Jun 4, 2009
- Messages
- 20,249
“In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of this world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.”
----
“There are, in the capacities of mankind, three varieties: one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put clearly before him.”
----
“Natural science is either the description of forms (morphology) or the explanation of changes (etiology). Neither can afford us the information we chiefly desire.”
----
“Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature."
----
“Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry, philosophy or art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes, keeping up single-handed a desperate struggling against the onslaught of an army of opponents. Is not this characteristic of the miserable nature of mankind? The dullness, grosness, perversity, silliness, and brutality of by far the greater part of the race are always an obstacle to the efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art; they so form that hostile army to which he at last has to succumb.”
----
“The whole talk about the absolute, is nothing but the cosmological proof incognito. This proof, in consequence of the case brought against it by Kant, deprived of all right and declared outlawed, dare no longer show itself in its true form, and therefore appears in all kinds of disguises - now in distinguished form, concealed under intellectual intuition or pure thought now as a suspicious vagabond, half begging, half demanding what it wants in more unpretending philosophemes. If an absolute must absolutely be had, then I will give one which is far better fitted to meet all the demands which are made on such a thing than these visionary phantoms: it is matter. It has no beginning, and it is imperishable; thus it is really independent, and quod per se est et per se concipitur; from its womb all proceeds, and to it all returns; what more can be desired of an absolute?”
----
“Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!”
----
“It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.”
----
“No difference of rank, position, or birth is so great as the gulf that spearates the countless millions who use their head only in the service of their belly, in other words, look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very few and rare persons who have the courage to say: No! It is too good for that; my head shall be active only in its own service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in some form, whether as art or as literature, that may answer to my character as an individual. These are the truly noble, the real noblesse of the world. The others are serfs and go with the soil. Of course, I am here referring to those who have not only the courage, but also the call, and therfore the right, to order the head to quit the service of the will; with a result that proves the sacrifice to have been worth the making. In the case of those to whom all this can only partially apply, the gulf is not so wide; but even though their talent be small, so long as it is real, there will always be a sharp line of demarcation between them and the millions.”
----
“On the other hand, I must mention that, by a diligent search in lunatic asylums, I have found individual cases of patients who where unquestionably endowed with great talents, and whose genius distinctly appeared through their madness, which, however, had completely gained the upper hand.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“There are, in the capacities of mankind, three varieties: one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put clearly before him.”
----
“Natural science is either the description of forms (morphology) or the explanation of changes (etiology). Neither can afford us the information we chiefly desire.”
----
“Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature."
----
“Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry, philosophy or art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes, keeping up single-handed a desperate struggling against the onslaught of an army of opponents. Is not this characteristic of the miserable nature of mankind? The dullness, grosness, perversity, silliness, and brutality of by far the greater part of the race are always an obstacle to the efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art; they so form that hostile army to which he at last has to succumb.”
----
“The whole talk about the absolute, is nothing but the cosmological proof incognito. This proof, in consequence of the case brought against it by Kant, deprived of all right and declared outlawed, dare no longer show itself in its true form, and therefore appears in all kinds of disguises - now in distinguished form, concealed under intellectual intuition or pure thought now as a suspicious vagabond, half begging, half demanding what it wants in more unpretending philosophemes. If an absolute must absolutely be had, then I will give one which is far better fitted to meet all the demands which are made on such a thing than these visionary phantoms: it is matter. It has no beginning, and it is imperishable; thus it is really independent, and quod per se est et per se concipitur; from its womb all proceeds, and to it all returns; what more can be desired of an absolute?”
----
“Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!”
----
“It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.”
----
“No difference of rank, position, or birth is so great as the gulf that spearates the countless millions who use their head only in the service of their belly, in other words, look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very few and rare persons who have the courage to say: No! It is too good for that; my head shall be active only in its own service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in some form, whether as art or as literature, that may answer to my character as an individual. These are the truly noble, the real noblesse of the world. The others are serfs and go with the soil. Of course, I am here referring to those who have not only the courage, but also the call, and therfore the right, to order the head to quit the service of the will; with a result that proves the sacrifice to have been worth the making. In the case of those to whom all this can only partially apply, the gulf is not so wide; but even though their talent be small, so long as it is real, there will always be a sharp line of demarcation between them and the millions.”
----
“On the other hand, I must mention that, by a diligent search in lunatic asylums, I have found individual cases of patients who where unquestionably endowed with great talents, and whose genius distinctly appeared through their madness, which, however, had completely gained the upper hand.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
Map Reviewer
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- Messages
- 20,249
Map Reviewer
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2009
- Messages
- 20,249
“It is the possession of a great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame of it, which is worth having, and conducive to happiness. Not fame, but that which deserves to be famous, is what a man should hold in esteem.”
----
“What offends a great intellect in society is the equality of rights, leading to equality of pretensions, which everyone enjoys; while at the same time, inequality of capacity means a corresponding disparity of social power. So-called good society recognizes every kind of claim but that of intellect, which is a contraband article; and people are expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience towards every form of folly and stupidity, perversity and dullness; whilst personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for being present, or else conceal itself altogether. Intellectual superiority offends by its very existence, without any desire to do so.
----
“However much the plays and the masks on the world's stage may change it is always the same actors who appear. We sit together and talk and grow excited, and our eyes glitter and our voices grow shriller: just so did others sit and talk a thousand years ago: it was the same thing, and it was the same people: and it will be just so a thousand years hence. The contrivance which prevents us from perceiving this is time.”
----
“What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles. Hence, if a man suddenly finds himself in an unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in any other than a happy position, or this becomes his permanent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of feeling any more sympathy with it. So it is that the poor often show themselves more ready to help than the rich.”
----
“It would be a great advantage to a young man if his early training could eradicate the idea that the world has a great deal to offer him. But the usual result of education is to strenghten this delusion; and our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than from fact.”
----
“Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.”
----
“It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative, and that pain is positive in its nature, in order to see that the passions can never be a source of happiness, and that age is not the less to be envied on the ground that many pleasures are denied it. For every sort of pleasure is never anything more than the quietive of some need or longing; and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need ceases, is no more a subject of complaint than that a man cannot go on eating after he has had his dinner, or fall asleep again after a good night's rest.
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“What offends a great intellect in society is the equality of rights, leading to equality of pretensions, which everyone enjoys; while at the same time, inequality of capacity means a corresponding disparity of social power. So-called good society recognizes every kind of claim but that of intellect, which is a contraband article; and people are expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience towards every form of folly and stupidity, perversity and dullness; whilst personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for being present, or else conceal itself altogether. Intellectual superiority offends by its very existence, without any desire to do so.
----
“However much the plays and the masks on the world's stage may change it is always the same actors who appear. We sit together and talk and grow excited, and our eyes glitter and our voices grow shriller: just so did others sit and talk a thousand years ago: it was the same thing, and it was the same people: and it will be just so a thousand years hence. The contrivance which prevents us from perceiving this is time.”
----
“What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles. Hence, if a man suddenly finds himself in an unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in any other than a happy position, or this becomes his permanent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of feeling any more sympathy with it. So it is that the poor often show themselves more ready to help than the rich.”
----
“It would be a great advantage to a young man if his early training could eradicate the idea that the world has a great deal to offer him. But the usual result of education is to strenghten this delusion; and our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than from fact.”
----
“Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.”
----
“It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative, and that pain is positive in its nature, in order to see that the passions can never be a source of happiness, and that age is not the less to be envied on the ground that many pleasures are denied it. For every sort of pleasure is never anything more than the quietive of some need or longing; and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need ceases, is no more a subject of complaint than that a man cannot go on eating after he has had his dinner, or fall asleep again after a good night's rest.
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
Map Reviewer
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- Messages
- 20,249
Map Reviewer
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- Jun 4, 2009
- Messages
- 20,249
“The middle ages showed us the results of thinking without experimentation, our present century shows us what experimentation without thinking leads to".”
----
“More than nine-tenths of all literate men and women certainly read nothing but newspapers, and consequently model their orthography, grammar and style almost exclusively on them and even, in their simplicity, regard the murdering of language which goes on in them as brevity of expression, elegant facility and ingenious innovation; indeed, young people of the unlearned professions in general regard the newspaper as an authority simply because it is something printed. For this reason, the state should, in all seriousness, take measures to ensure that the newspapers are altogether free of linguistic errors
----
“The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.”
----
“One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.”
----
“You can also look upon our life as an episode unprofitably disturbing the blessed calm of nothingness.”
----
“For to kill a man in a fair fight, is to prove that you are superior to him in strength or skill; and to justify the deed, you must assume that the right of the stronger is really a right.”
----
“Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense.”
----
“All geniuses are peculiarly inclined to solitude, to which they are driven as much by their difference from others as the inner wealth with which they are quipped, since among humans, among diamonds, only the uncommonly great are suited as solitaires: the ordinary ones must be set in clusters to produce any effect.”
----
“No man becomes this or that by wishing to be it, however earnestly.”
----
“...officers in the army, (except those in the highest positions), are paid most inadequately for the services they perform; and the deficiency is made up by honor, which is represented by titles and orders, and, in general, by the system of rank and distinction.”
----
“Exaggeration in every sense is as essential to newspaper writing as it is to the writing of plays: for the point is to make as much as possible of every occurrence. So that all newspaper writers are, for the sake of their trade, alarmists: this is their way of making themselves interesting.”
----
“Phil. Look what you are doing! When you say, I—I—I want to exist you alone do not say this, but everything, absolutely everything, that has only a vestige of consciousness. Consequently this desire of yours is just that which is not individual but which is common to all without distinction.”
----
“The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon his getting the reputation that he should be read. But by practicing various arts, by the operation of chance, and by certain natural affinities, this reputation is quickly won by a hundred worthless people: while a worthy writer may come by it very slowly and tardily. The former possess friends to help them; for the rabble is always a numerous body which holds well together. The latter has nothing but enemies; because intellectual superiority is everywhere and under all circumstances the most hateful thing in the world, and especially to bunglers in the same line of work, who want to pass for something themselves. This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any great work--any work which is to outlive its own age, that a man pay no heed to his contemporaries, their views and opinons, and the praise or blame which they bestow.”
----
“And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter of prudence whilst speech has something in it of vanity”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“More than nine-tenths of all literate men and women certainly read nothing but newspapers, and consequently model their orthography, grammar and style almost exclusively on them and even, in their simplicity, regard the murdering of language which goes on in them as brevity of expression, elegant facility and ingenious innovation; indeed, young people of the unlearned professions in general regard the newspaper as an authority simply because it is something printed. For this reason, the state should, in all seriousness, take measures to ensure that the newspapers are altogether free of linguistic errors
----
“The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.”
----
“One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.”
----
“You can also look upon our life as an episode unprofitably disturbing the blessed calm of nothingness.”
----
“For to kill a man in a fair fight, is to prove that you are superior to him in strength or skill; and to justify the deed, you must assume that the right of the stronger is really a right.”
----
“Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense.”
----
“All geniuses are peculiarly inclined to solitude, to which they are driven as much by their difference from others as the inner wealth with which they are quipped, since among humans, among diamonds, only the uncommonly great are suited as solitaires: the ordinary ones must be set in clusters to produce any effect.”
----
“No man becomes this or that by wishing to be it, however earnestly.”
----
“...officers in the army, (except those in the highest positions), are paid most inadequately for the services they perform; and the deficiency is made up by honor, which is represented by titles and orders, and, in general, by the system of rank and distinction.”
----
“Exaggeration in every sense is as essential to newspaper writing as it is to the writing of plays: for the point is to make as much as possible of every occurrence. So that all newspaper writers are, for the sake of their trade, alarmists: this is their way of making themselves interesting.”
----
“Phil. Look what you are doing! When you say, I—I—I want to exist you alone do not say this, but everything, absolutely everything, that has only a vestige of consciousness. Consequently this desire of yours is just that which is not individual but which is common to all without distinction.”
----
“The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon his getting the reputation that he should be read. But by practicing various arts, by the operation of chance, and by certain natural affinities, this reputation is quickly won by a hundred worthless people: while a worthy writer may come by it very slowly and tardily. The former possess friends to help them; for the rabble is always a numerous body which holds well together. The latter has nothing but enemies; because intellectual superiority is everywhere and under all circumstances the most hateful thing in the world, and especially to bunglers in the same line of work, who want to pass for something themselves. This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any great work--any work which is to outlive its own age, that a man pay no heed to his contemporaries, their views and opinons, and the praise or blame which they bestow.”
----
“And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter of prudence whilst speech has something in it of vanity”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
Map Reviewer
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- Jun 4, 2009
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Map Reviewer
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“Without will there is no concept and no world. Before us, certainly, nothing remains. But what resists this transition into annihilation, our nature, is only that same wish to live -- Wille zum Leben -- which forms ourselves as well as our world. That we are so afraid of annihilation or, what is the same thing, that we so wish to live, merely means that we are ourselves nothing else but this desire to live, and know nothing but it. And so what remains after the complete annihilation of the will, for us who are so full of the will, is, of course, nothing; but on the other hand, for those in whom the will has turned and renounced itself, this so real world of ours with all its suns and milky way is nothing.”
----
“Everywhere where detestable Islam has not yet driven out the ancient, profound religions of humanity with fire and sword, my ascetic results would have to fear the reproach of being trivial”
----
“Kant's old hat; the autographs of great men; these things are gaped at with interest and awe by many who have never read their works. They cannot do anything more than just gape. The intelligent amongst them are moved by the wish to see the objects which the great man habitually had before his eyes; and by a strange illusion, these produce the mistaken notion that with the objects they are bring back the man himself.”
----
“His work is as it were, a sacred object and the true fruit of his life, and his aim in storing it away for a more discerning posterity will be to make it the property of mankind. An aim like this far surpasses all others, and for it he wears the crown of thorns which is one day to bloom into a wreath of laurel. All his powers are concentrated in the effort to complete and secure his work; just as the insect, in the last stage of its development, uses its whole strength on behalf of a brood it will never live to see; it puts its eggs in some place of safety, where, as it well knows, the young will one day find life and nourishment, and then dies in confidence.”
----
“is obviously high time that the Jewish conception of nature, at any rate in regard to animals, should come to an end in Europe, and that the eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal should be recognized as such, and as such treated with care and consideration.”
----
“Pantheism is a self-defeating concept, because the concept of a God presupposes a world different from him as an essential correlate. If, on the other hand, the world is supposed to take over his role, then an absolute world without God remains; hence pantheism is only an euphemism for atheism.”
----
“Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers,magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“Everywhere where detestable Islam has not yet driven out the ancient, profound religions of humanity with fire and sword, my ascetic results would have to fear the reproach of being trivial”
----
“Kant's old hat; the autographs of great men; these things are gaped at with interest and awe by many who have never read their works. They cannot do anything more than just gape. The intelligent amongst them are moved by the wish to see the objects which the great man habitually had before his eyes; and by a strange illusion, these produce the mistaken notion that with the objects they are bring back the man himself.”
----
“His work is as it were, a sacred object and the true fruit of his life, and his aim in storing it away for a more discerning posterity will be to make it the property of mankind. An aim like this far surpasses all others, and for it he wears the crown of thorns which is one day to bloom into a wreath of laurel. All his powers are concentrated in the effort to complete and secure his work; just as the insect, in the last stage of its development, uses its whole strength on behalf of a brood it will never live to see; it puts its eggs in some place of safety, where, as it well knows, the young will one day find life and nourishment, and then dies in confidence.”
----
“is obviously high time that the Jewish conception of nature, at any rate in regard to animals, should come to an end in Europe, and that the eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal should be recognized as such, and as such treated with care and consideration.”
----
“Pantheism is a self-defeating concept, because the concept of a God presupposes a world different from him as an essential correlate. If, on the other hand, the world is supposed to take over his role, then an absolute world without God remains; hence pantheism is only an euphemism for atheism.”
----
“Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers,magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
Map Reviewer
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- Jun 4, 2009
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Map Reviewer
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“Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable.”
----
“It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard.”
----
“If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed.”
----
it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it.
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard.”
----
“If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed.”
----
it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it.
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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Never underestimate the skill sets required to pee standing up, and not get wet, when surrounded by men ~Some lady philosopher
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“Belief is like love: it cannot be compelled; and as any attempt to compel love produces hate, so it is the attempt to compel belief which first produces real unbelief.”
----
“The eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal ... the animal is in essence absolutely the same thing that we are."
----
“The latter had assumed the reality of the external world on the credit of God; and here, of course, it seems strange that, whereas the other theistic philosophers endeavour to demonstrate the existence of God from that of the world, Descartes, on the contrary, proves the existence of the world first from the existence and trustworthiness of God; it is the cosmological proof the other way round. Here too Malebranche goes a step farther and teaches that we see all things immediately in God himself. This certainly is equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown.”
----
“If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every world he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself.
Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look at though you did not believe him, this opposition on you part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“The eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal ... the animal is in essence absolutely the same thing that we are."
----
“The latter had assumed the reality of the external world on the credit of God; and here, of course, it seems strange that, whereas the other theistic philosophers endeavour to demonstrate the existence of God from that of the world, Descartes, on the contrary, proves the existence of the world first from the existence and trustworthiness of God; it is the cosmological proof the other way round. Here too Malebranche goes a step farther and teaches that we see all things immediately in God himself. This certainly is equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown.”
----
“If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every world he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself.
Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look at though you did not believe him, this opposition on you part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“Through neglect of this rule, many men of genius and great scholars have become weak-minded and childish, or even gone quite mad, as they grew old. To take no other instances, there can be no doubt that the celebrated English poets of the early part of this century, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, became intellectually dull and incapable towards the end of their days, nay, soon after passing their sixtieth year; and that their imbecility can be traced to the fact that, at that period of life, they were all led on? by the promise of high pay, to treat literature as a trade and to write for money. This seduced them into an unnatural abuse of their intellectual powers; and a man who puts his Pegasus into harness, and urges on his Muse with the whip, will have to pay a penalty similar to that which is exacted by the abuse of other kinds of power"
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“What is more, in fact, we very soon look upon the world as something whose non-existence is not only conceivable, but even preferable to its existence. Therefore our astonishment at it easily passes into a brooding over that *fatality* which could nevertheless bring about its existence, and by virtue of which such an immense force as is demanded for the production and maintenance of such a world could be directed so much against its own interest and advantage."
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“But if a man finds himself in possession of great mental faculties, such as alone should venture on the solution of the hardest of all problems—those which concern nature as a whole and humanity in its widest range, he will do well to extend his view equally in all directions, without ever straying too far amid the intricacies of various by-paths, or invading regions little known; in other words, without occupying himself with special branches of knowledge, to say nothing of their petty details. There is no necessity for him to seek out subjects difficult of access, in order to escape a crowd of rivals; the common objects of life will give him material for new theories at once serious and true; and the service he renders will be appreciated by all those—and they form a great part of mankind—who know the facts of which he treats. What a vast distinction there is between students of physics, chemistry, anatomy, mineralogy, zoology, philology, history, and the men who deal with the great facts of human life, the poet and the philosopher!”
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“There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, and finally to assert that it had already long existed.”
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“Looking at the turmoil of life from this standpoint we find all occupied with its want and misery, exerting all their strength in order to satisfy its endless needs and avert manifold suffering, without, however, daring to expect anything else in return than merely the preservation of this tormented individual existence for a short span of time. And yet, amid all this turmoil we see a pair of lovers exchanging longing glances — yet why so secretly, timidly, and stealthily? Because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to perpetuate all this misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a timely end.”
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“Mankind is growing out of religion as out of its childhood clothes."
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“Demopheles: Every man's faith is sacred to him, therefore it should be sacred to you too.
Philalethes: I deny your conclusion! I can't see why, because other people are simple-minded, I should respect a pack of lies.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“What is more, in fact, we very soon look upon the world as something whose non-existence is not only conceivable, but even preferable to its existence. Therefore our astonishment at it easily passes into a brooding over that *fatality* which could nevertheless bring about its existence, and by virtue of which such an immense force as is demanded for the production and maintenance of such a world could be directed so much against its own interest and advantage."
----
“But if a man finds himself in possession of great mental faculties, such as alone should venture on the solution of the hardest of all problems—those which concern nature as a whole and humanity in its widest range, he will do well to extend his view equally in all directions, without ever straying too far amid the intricacies of various by-paths, or invading regions little known; in other words, without occupying himself with special branches of knowledge, to say nothing of their petty details. There is no necessity for him to seek out subjects difficult of access, in order to escape a crowd of rivals; the common objects of life will give him material for new theories at once serious and true; and the service he renders will be appreciated by all those—and they form a great part of mankind—who know the facts of which he treats. What a vast distinction there is between students of physics, chemistry, anatomy, mineralogy, zoology, philology, history, and the men who deal with the great facts of human life, the poet and the philosopher!”
----
“There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, and finally to assert that it had already long existed.”
----
“Looking at the turmoil of life from this standpoint we find all occupied with its want and misery, exerting all their strength in order to satisfy its endless needs and avert manifold suffering, without, however, daring to expect anything else in return than merely the preservation of this tormented individual existence for a short span of time. And yet, amid all this turmoil we see a pair of lovers exchanging longing glances — yet why so secretly, timidly, and stealthily? Because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to perpetuate all this misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a timely end.”
----
“Mankind is growing out of religion as out of its childhood clothes."
----
“Demopheles: Every man's faith is sacred to him, therefore it should be sacred to you too.
Philalethes: I deny your conclusion! I can't see why, because other people are simple-minded, I should respect a pack of lies.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“For what is our civilised world but a big masquerade? where you meet knights, priests, soldiers, men of learning, barristers, clergymen, philosophers, and I don't know what all! But they are not what they pretend to be; they are only masks, and, as a rule, behind the masks you will find moneymakers.”
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“I have been pursuing my own train of thought for more than thirty years, undisturbed by all this, just because it is what I must do, and I could not do otherwise, out of an instinctive drive which is nonetheless supported by the confidence that what is thought truly and what throws light on obscurity will be grasped at some point by another thinking mind."
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“A man may begin by following the craving of desire, until he comes to see how hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses; and this it is that makes people hermits, penitents, Magdalenes.”
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“The paltry character of most men compels the few who have any merit or genius to behave as though they did not know their own value, and consequently did not know other people's want of value; for it is only on this condition that the mob acquiesces in tolerating merit. A virtue has been made out of this necessity, and it is called modesty.”
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“n other words, we should live with due knowledge of the course of things in the world. For whenever a man in any way loses self-control, or is struck down by a misfortune, grows angry, or loses heart, he shows in this way that he finds things different from what he expected, and consequently that he laboured under a mistake, did not know the world and life, did not know how at every step the will of the individual is crossed and thwarted by the chance of inanimate nature, by contrary aims and intentions, even by the malice inspired in others. Therefore either he has not used his reason to arrive at a general knowledge of this characteristic of life, or he lacks the power of judgement, when he does not again recognize in the particular what he knows in general, and when he is therefore surprised by it and loses his self-control. Thus every keen pleasure is an error, an illusion, since no attained wish can permanently satisfy, and also because every possession and every happiness is only lent by chance for an indefinite time, and can therefore be demanded back in the next hour. Thus both originate from defective knowledge. Therefore the wise man always holds himself aloof from jubilation and sorrow, and no event disturbs his ἀταραξία [ataraxia]."
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“I have been pursuing my own train of thought for more than thirty years, undisturbed by all this, just because it is what I must do, and I could not do otherwise, out of an instinctive drive which is nonetheless supported by the confidence that what is thought truly and what throws light on obscurity will be grasped at some point by another thinking mind."
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“A man may begin by following the craving of desire, until he comes to see how hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses; and this it is that makes people hermits, penitents, Magdalenes.”
----
“The paltry character of most men compels the few who have any merit or genius to behave as though they did not know their own value, and consequently did not know other people's want of value; for it is only on this condition that the mob acquiesces in tolerating merit. A virtue has been made out of this necessity, and it is called modesty.”
----
“n other words, we should live with due knowledge of the course of things in the world. For whenever a man in any way loses self-control, or is struck down by a misfortune, grows angry, or loses heart, he shows in this way that he finds things different from what he expected, and consequently that he laboured under a mistake, did not know the world and life, did not know how at every step the will of the individual is crossed and thwarted by the chance of inanimate nature, by contrary aims and intentions, even by the malice inspired in others. Therefore either he has not used his reason to arrive at a general knowledge of this characteristic of life, or he lacks the power of judgement, when he does not again recognize in the particular what he knows in general, and when he is therefore surprised by it and loses his self-control. Thus every keen pleasure is an error, an illusion, since no attained wish can permanently satisfy, and also because every possession and every happiness is only lent by chance for an indefinite time, and can therefore be demanded back in the next hour. Thus both originate from defective knowledge. Therefore the wise man always holds himself aloof from jubilation and sorrow, and no event disturbs his ἀταραξία [ataraxia]."
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“Life is a stage where the worst actor plays the king while the best actor the beggar.”
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“The peculiar characteristic of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity, akin to that of animals. Nothing really pleases, or excites, or interests him, for sensual pleasure is quickly exhausted, and the society of philistines soon becomes burdensome, and one may even get tired of playing cards.”
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“Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: It is not wealth but character that lasts.
And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character. Therefore, subjective blessings — a noble nature, a capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important elements in happiness; so that we should be more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the possession of external wealth and external honor.”
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“The way to keep down hatred and contempt is certainly not to look for a man's alleged "dignity," but, on the contrary, to regard him as an object of pity.”
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“The right to or claim on something means nothing more than to do it, or take it or be able to use it without in any way thereby injuring another: simplicity is the sign of the true. This sheds light on the meaninglessness of the same questions, e.g. whether we have the right to take our own life. But as concerns the claims that others could personally have upon us, they rest upon the condition that we are living, and therefore cease if the condition ceases. That the one who no longer wants to live for himself should now continue to live merely as a machine for the use of others is an extravagant demand.”
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“The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.... All laughter then is occasioned by a paradox.... This, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“The peculiar characteristic of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity, akin to that of animals. Nothing really pleases, or excites, or interests him, for sensual pleasure is quickly exhausted, and the society of philistines soon becomes burdensome, and one may even get tired of playing cards.”
----
“Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: It is not wealth but character that lasts.
And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character. Therefore, subjective blessings — a noble nature, a capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important elements in happiness; so that we should be more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the possession of external wealth and external honor.”
----
“The way to keep down hatred and contempt is certainly not to look for a man's alleged "dignity," but, on the contrary, to regard him as an object of pity.”
----
“The right to or claim on something means nothing more than to do it, or take it or be able to use it without in any way thereby injuring another: simplicity is the sign of the true. This sheds light on the meaninglessness of the same questions, e.g. whether we have the right to take our own life. But as concerns the claims that others could personally have upon us, they rest upon the condition that we are living, and therefore cease if the condition ceases. That the one who no longer wants to live for himself should now continue to live merely as a machine for the use of others is an extravagant demand.”
----
“The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.... All laughter then is occasioned by a paradox.... This, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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"The more you give, the more you receive in return."
Applies to everything in life.
Applies to everything in life.
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“You should deal sternly and despotically with your memory, so that it does not unlearn obedience; if, for example, you cannot call something to mind, a line of poetry or a word perhaps, you should not go and look it up in a book, but periodically plague your memory with it for weeks on end until your memory has done its duty. For the longer you have had to rack your brains for something the more firmly will it stay once you have got it.”
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“Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother.
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“There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year by ceaselessly rehearsing it before him with solemn earnestness.”
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“A man cannot serve two masters: so it is either reason or the scriptures."
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“A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it is not so useful as one that is small but well arranged. In the same way, a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.”
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“Courage, however, may also be explained as a readiness to meet ills that threaten at the moment, in order to avoid greater ills that lie in the future; whereas cowardice does the contrary.”
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“Before you take anything away you must have something better to put in its place.”
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“The only freedom that exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom is an impossibility.”
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“And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother.
----
“There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year by ceaselessly rehearsing it before him with solemn earnestness.”
----
“A man cannot serve two masters: so it is either reason or the scriptures."
----
“A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it is not so useful as one that is small but well arranged. In the same way, a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.”
----
“Courage, however, may also be explained as a readiness to meet ills that threaten at the moment, in order to avoid greater ills that lie in the future; whereas cowardice does the contrary.”
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“Before you take anything away you must have something better to put in its place.”
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“The only freedom that exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom is an impossibility.”
----
“And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“Junghuhn saw an immense field entirely covered with skeletons, and took it to be a battlefield. However they were nothing but skeletons of large turtles, five feet long, three feet broad, and of equal height. These turtles come this way from the sea, in order to lay their eggs, and are then seized by wild dogs (canis rutilans); with their united strength, these dogs lay them on their backs, tear open their lower armour, the small scales of the belly, and devour them alive. But then a tiger often pounces on the dogs. Now all this misery is repeated thousands and thousands of times, year in, year out. For this then, are these turtles born. For what offence must they suffer this agony? What is the point of the whole scene of horror? The only answer is that the will-to-live [the world-will] thus objectifies itself.”
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“Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.”
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“I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death. The truth . . . was that this world could not have been the work of an all-loving Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings; to this the data pointed, and the belief that it is so won the upper hand.”
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“Thus, flowers cannot be preserved, but their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and the same virtues, can. The conduct that has had correct concepts for its guidance will, in the result, coincide with the reality intended.”
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“She has tender feet, for she walks not on the hard earth, but treads on the heads of men”
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“Every State looks upon its neighbours as at bottom a horde of robbers, who will fall upon it as soon as they have the opportunity.”
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“Seneca rightly remarks, ut quisque contemtissimus et ludibrio est, ita solutissimae est, the more contemptible and ridiculous a man is,-the readier he is with his tongue.”
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“You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of child-bearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.”
----
“I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death. The truth . . . was that this world could not have been the work of an all-loving Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings; to this the data pointed, and the belief that it is so won the upper hand.”
----
“Thus, flowers cannot be preserved, but their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and the same virtues, can. The conduct that has had correct concepts for its guidance will, in the result, coincide with the reality intended.”
----
“She has tender feet, for she walks not on the hard earth, but treads on the heads of men”
----
“Every State looks upon its neighbours as at bottom a horde of robbers, who will fall upon it as soon as they have the opportunity.”
----
“Seneca rightly remarks, ut quisque contemtissimus et ludibrio est, ita solutissimae est, the more contemptible and ridiculous a man is,-the readier he is with his tongue.”
----
“You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of child-bearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“That the Negroes were enslaved more than other races, and on a large scale, is evidently a result of their being, in contrast to other races, inferior in intelligence - which, however, does not justify such slavery”
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“We all feel that we are something other than a being which someone once created out of nothing: from this arises the confidence that, while death may be able to end our life, it cannot end our existence.”
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“For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it.”
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“Mere subtlety may qualify you as a sceptic but not as a philosopher. On the other hand, scepticism is in philosophy what the Opposition is in Parliament; it is just as beneficial, and indeed necessary. It rests everywhere on the fact that philosophy is not capable of producing the kind of evidence mathematics produces.”
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“Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.”
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~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“We all feel that we are something other than a being which someone once created out of nothing: from this arises the confidence that, while death may be able to end our life, it cannot end our existence.”
----
“For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it.”
----
“Mere subtlety may qualify you as a sceptic but not as a philosopher. On the other hand, scepticism is in philosophy what the Opposition is in Parliament; it is just as beneficial, and indeed necessary. It rests everywhere on the fact that philosophy is not capable of producing the kind of evidence mathematics produces.”
----
“Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.”
----
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“Thrasymachos. Tell me now, in one word, what shall I be after my death? And mind you be clear and precise. Philalethes. All and nothing! Thrasymachos. I thought so! I gave you a problem, and you solve it by a contradiction. That's a very stale trick. Philalethes. Yes, but you raise transcendental questions, and you expect me to answer them in language that is only made for immanent knowledge. It's no wonder that a contradiction ensues.”
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“Considering the monotony and consequent insipidity of life one would find it unendurably tedious after any considerable length of time, were it not for the continual advance of knowledge and insight and the acquisition of even better and clearer understanding of all things, which is partly the fruit of experience, partly the result of the changes we ourselves undergo through the different stages of life by which our point of view is to a certain extent being continually altered, whereby things reveal to us sides we did not yet know. In this way, despite the decline in our mental powers, dies diem docet still holds indefatigably true and gives life an ever-renewed fascination, that what is identical continually appears as something new and different.”
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“Kant himself betrays his consciousness of the untenable nature of his doctrine of the categories by the fact that in the third chapter of the Analytic of Principles (phaenomena et noumena) several long passages of the first edition (p. 241, 242, 244-246, 248-253) are omitted in the second - passages which displayed the weakness of that doctrine too openly. So, for example, he says there (p. 241) that he has not defined the individual categories, because he could not define them even if he had wished to do so, inasmuch as they were susceptible of no definition. In saying this he forgot that at p. 82 of the same first edition he had said: 'I purposely dispense with the definition of the categories although I may be in possession of it." This then was, sit venia verbo, wind. But this last passage he has allowed to stand. And so all those passages wisely omitted afterwards betray the fact that nothing distinct can be thought in connection with the categories, and this whole doctrine stands upon a weak foundation.”
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“Life is only the mirror into which a man gazes not in order that he may get a reflection of himself, but that he may come to understand himself by that reflection; that he may see what it is that the mirror shows.”
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“In order not to judge unfairly one ought also to settle definitely one's expectations from this [our] point of view, and to regard, for example, even learned men, since as a rule they have become so only by the force of outward circumstances, primarily as men whom nature really intended to be tillers of the soil; indeed even professors of philosophy ought to be estimated according to this standard, and then their achievements will be found to come up to all fair expectations.”
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“In conformity with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus begins with it and constantly returns to it as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should bear in mind and distinguish what depends on us and what does not, and thus should not count on the latter at all. In this way we shall certainly remain free from all pain, suffering, and anxiety. Now what depends on us is the will alone, and here there gradually takes place a transition to a doctrine of virtue, since it is noticed that, as the external world that is independent of us determines good and bad fortune, so inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ourselves proceeds from the will. But later it was asked whether we should attribute the names *bonum et malum* to the two former or to the two latter. This was really arbitrary and a matter of choice, and made no difference. But yet the Stoics argued incessantly about this with the Peripatetics and Epicureans, and amused themselves with the inadmissible comparison of two wholly incommensurable quantities and with the contrary and paradoxical judgements arising therefrom, which they cast on one another. An interesting collection of these is afforded us from the Stoic side by the *Paradoxa* of Cicero."
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“Considering the monotony and consequent insipidity of life one would find it unendurably tedious after any considerable length of time, were it not for the continual advance of knowledge and insight and the acquisition of even better and clearer understanding of all things, which is partly the fruit of experience, partly the result of the changes we ourselves undergo through the different stages of life by which our point of view is to a certain extent being continually altered, whereby things reveal to us sides we did not yet know. In this way, despite the decline in our mental powers, dies diem docet still holds indefatigably true and gives life an ever-renewed fascination, that what is identical continually appears as something new and different.”
----
“Kant himself betrays his consciousness of the untenable nature of his doctrine of the categories by the fact that in the third chapter of the Analytic of Principles (phaenomena et noumena) several long passages of the first edition (p. 241, 242, 244-246, 248-253) are omitted in the second - passages which displayed the weakness of that doctrine too openly. So, for example, he says there (p. 241) that he has not defined the individual categories, because he could not define them even if he had wished to do so, inasmuch as they were susceptible of no definition. In saying this he forgot that at p. 82 of the same first edition he had said: 'I purposely dispense with the definition of the categories although I may be in possession of it." This then was, sit venia verbo, wind. But this last passage he has allowed to stand. And so all those passages wisely omitted afterwards betray the fact that nothing distinct can be thought in connection with the categories, and this whole doctrine stands upon a weak foundation.”
----
“Life is only the mirror into which a man gazes not in order that he may get a reflection of himself, but that he may come to understand himself by that reflection; that he may see what it is that the mirror shows.”
----
“In order not to judge unfairly one ought also to settle definitely one's expectations from this [our] point of view, and to regard, for example, even learned men, since as a rule they have become so only by the force of outward circumstances, primarily as men whom nature really intended to be tillers of the soil; indeed even professors of philosophy ought to be estimated according to this standard, and then their achievements will be found to come up to all fair expectations.”
----
“In conformity with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus begins with it and constantly returns to it as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should bear in mind and distinguish what depends on us and what does not, and thus should not count on the latter at all. In this way we shall certainly remain free from all pain, suffering, and anxiety. Now what depends on us is the will alone, and here there gradually takes place a transition to a doctrine of virtue, since it is noticed that, as the external world that is independent of us determines good and bad fortune, so inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ourselves proceeds from the will. But later it was asked whether we should attribute the names *bonum et malum* to the two former or to the two latter. This was really arbitrary and a matter of choice, and made no difference. But yet the Stoics argued incessantly about this with the Peripatetics and Epicureans, and amused themselves with the inadmissible comparison of two wholly incommensurable quantities and with the contrary and paradoxical judgements arising therefrom, which they cast on one another. An interesting collection of these is afforded us from the Stoic side by the *Paradoxa* of Cicero."
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“On the philosophy of the Asiatics; "Asiatic Researches", vol. IV, p. 164: "the fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms”
----
“This is in the highest degree the case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty power of phantasy which was capable of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and beautiful.”
----
“But this has brought about everything that makes the life of humans so rich, so cultivated, and so terrible, that here in the West, which has made them pale and white, and where the ancient, true, profound, original religionsb of their homeland could not follow, humans no longer recognize animals as their brothers, but believe them to be something fundamentally different from themselves; and to maintain this illusion, humans call animals beasts, assigning derogatory terms to all the vital functions which humans have in common with them [...]"
----
“A constitution embodying nothing but abstract justice would be a wonderful thing, but it would not be suited to beings such as men. Because the great majority of men are in the highest degree egoistic, unjust, inconsiderate, deceitful, sometimes even malicious, and equipped moreover with very mediocre intelligence, there exists the need for a completely unaccountable power, concentrated in one man and standing above even justice and the law, before which everything bows and which is regarded as a being of a higher order, a sovereign by the grace of God. Only thus can mankind in the long run be curbed and ruled.”
----
“The entire world of objects is, and remains, representation; and precisely because of this, it is and will always be thoroughly conditioned by the subject, that is: the world has transcendental ideality. But this is also why the world is not a lie or an illusion: it presents itself as what it is, as representation, and in fact as a series of representations bound together by the principle of sufficient reason. To those with common sense, this is how the world is: even its innermost meaning is comprehensible and speaks a language of utter clarity.”
----
“Then again we find that young girls in their hearts regard their domestic or other affairs as secondary things, if not as a mere jest. Love, conquests, and all that these include, such as dressing, dancing, and so on, they give their serious attention.”
----
“Only through the unification of time and space is there matter, i.e. the possibility of simultaneity, and through that, duration, and again through these, the persistence of substance during alteration of state.”
----
“The public had been forced to see [by Kant's writings] that what is obscure is not always without meaning; what was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make vigorous use of this privilege; Schelling at least equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel. It became the instrument of the most ponderous and general mystification that has ever existed, with a result that will seem incredible to posterity, and be a lasting monument of German stupidity.”
----
“Republics are anti-natural, artificial, and derive from reflection: consequently there are also very few of them in the entire history of mankind...”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“This is in the highest degree the case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty power of phantasy which was capable of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and beautiful.”
----
“But this has brought about everything that makes the life of humans so rich, so cultivated, and so terrible, that here in the West, which has made them pale and white, and where the ancient, true, profound, original religionsb of their homeland could not follow, humans no longer recognize animals as their brothers, but believe them to be something fundamentally different from themselves; and to maintain this illusion, humans call animals beasts, assigning derogatory terms to all the vital functions which humans have in common with them [...]"
----
“A constitution embodying nothing but abstract justice would be a wonderful thing, but it would not be suited to beings such as men. Because the great majority of men are in the highest degree egoistic, unjust, inconsiderate, deceitful, sometimes even malicious, and equipped moreover with very mediocre intelligence, there exists the need for a completely unaccountable power, concentrated in one man and standing above even justice and the law, before which everything bows and which is regarded as a being of a higher order, a sovereign by the grace of God. Only thus can mankind in the long run be curbed and ruled.”
----
“The entire world of objects is, and remains, representation; and precisely because of this, it is and will always be thoroughly conditioned by the subject, that is: the world has transcendental ideality. But this is also why the world is not a lie or an illusion: it presents itself as what it is, as representation, and in fact as a series of representations bound together by the principle of sufficient reason. To those with common sense, this is how the world is: even its innermost meaning is comprehensible and speaks a language of utter clarity.”
----
“Then again we find that young girls in their hearts regard their domestic or other affairs as secondary things, if not as a mere jest. Love, conquests, and all that these include, such as dressing, dancing, and so on, they give their serious attention.”
----
“Only through the unification of time and space is there matter, i.e. the possibility of simultaneity, and through that, duration, and again through these, the persistence of substance during alteration of state.”
----
“The public had been forced to see [by Kant's writings] that what is obscure is not always without meaning; what was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make vigorous use of this privilege; Schelling at least equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel. It became the instrument of the most ponderous and general mystification that has ever existed, with a result that will seem incredible to posterity, and be a lasting monument of German stupidity.”
----
“Republics are anti-natural, artificial, and derive from reflection: consequently there are also very few of them in the entire history of mankind...”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“To secure and promote this feeling of cheerfulness should be the supreme aim of all our endeavors after happiness.”
----
“Above all the genuine philosopher will generally seek lucidity and clarity and will always strive not to be like a turbid, raging, rain-swollen stream, but much more like a Swiss lake, which, in its peacefulness, combines great depth with a great clarity that just reveals its great depth.”
----
“The entire dispute between materialists and spiritualists, which became so heated during 1855-56, is merely proof of the unbelievable vulgarity and shameless ignorance to which the learned profession has sunk as a result of the study of Hegelian nonsense and neglect of Kantian philosophy.”
----
“The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrines in all seriousness as true sensu proprio, and as absurdities form an essential part of these doctrines we have the great mischief of a continual fraud.”
----
“Never combat any man's opinion; for though you reached the age of Methuselah, you would never have done setting him right upon all the absurd things that he believes. It is also well to avoid correcting people's mistakes in conversation, however good your intentions may be; for it is easy to offend people, and difficult, if not impossible to mend them.”
----
“Our life is to be regarded as a loan received from death, with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
----
“Above all the genuine philosopher will generally seek lucidity and clarity and will always strive not to be like a turbid, raging, rain-swollen stream, but much more like a Swiss lake, which, in its peacefulness, combines great depth with a great clarity that just reveals its great depth.”
----
“The entire dispute between materialists and spiritualists, which became so heated during 1855-56, is merely proof of the unbelievable vulgarity and shameless ignorance to which the learned profession has sunk as a result of the study of Hegelian nonsense and neglect of Kantian philosophy.”
----
“The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrines in all seriousness as true sensu proprio, and as absurdities form an essential part of these doctrines we have the great mischief of a continual fraud.”
----
“Never combat any man's opinion; for though you reached the age of Methuselah, you would never have done setting him right upon all the absurd things that he believes. It is also well to avoid correcting people's mistakes in conversation, however good your intentions may be; for it is easy to offend people, and difficult, if not impossible to mend them.”
----
“Our life is to be regarded as a loan received from death, with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer.
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“All democracies demand common public education because nothing makes people so much alike as the same education.”
~Karl Jaspers.
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“Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such--an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive.”
~Karl Jaspers.
~Karl Jaspers.
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“The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.”
----
“Even the best institutions at the university are apt to deteriorate and to become distorted. Thus the very translation of thought into teachable form tends to impoverish its intellectual vitality. Once intellectual achievement is admitted into the body of accepted learning those achievements tend to assume an air of finality. Thus, it is merely a matter of convention at what point one subject ends and the other begins. It is possible, moreover, that an excellent scholar may not be able to find a place for himself within the established departmental divisions. A mediocre scholar may be preferred to him simply because his work fits into the traditional scheme. Any institution tends to consider itself an end in itself.”
----
“But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil--that is moral guilt.”
----
“The limits of science have always been the source of bitter disappointment when people expected something from science that it was not able to provide. Take the following examples: a man without faith seeking to find in science a substitute for his faith on which to build his life; a man unsatisfied by philosophy seeking an all-embracing universal truth in science; a spiritually shallow person growing aware of his own futility in the course of engaging in the endless reflections imposed by science. In every one of these cases, science begins as an object of blind idolatry and ends up as an object of hatred and
contempt. Disenchantment inevitably follows upon these and similar misconceptions. One question remains: What value can science possibly have when its limitations have become so painfully clear?”
----
“I live in a kind of tension between the will to say yes to my suffering, and my inability to utter this yes with complete sincerity.”
----
“I do not know which impulse was stronger in me when I began to think: the original thirst for knowledge or the urge to communicate with man. Knowledge attains its full meaning only through the bond that unites men; however, the urge to achieve agreement with another human being was so hard to satisfy. I was shocked by the lack of understanding, paralyzed, as it were, by every reconciliation in which what had gone before was not fully cleared up. Early in my life and then later again and again I was perplexed by people’s rigid inaccessibility and their failure to listen to reasons, their disregard of facts, their indifference which prohibited discussion, their defensive attitude which kept you at a distance and at the decisive moment buried any possibility of a close approach, and finally their shamelessness, that bares its own soul without reserve, as though no one were present. When ready assent occurred I remained unsatisfied, because it was not based on true insight but on yielding to persuasion; because it was the consequence of friendly cooperation, not a meeting of two selves. True, I knew the glory of friendship (in common studies, in the cordial atmosphere of home or countryside). But then came the moments of strangeness, as if human beings lived in different worlds. Steadily the consciousness of loneliness grew upon me in my youth, yet nothing seemed more pernicious to me than loneliness, especially the loneliness in the midst of social intercourse that deceives itself in a multitude of friendships. No urge seemed stronger to me than that for communication with others. If the never-completed movement of communication succeeds with but a single human being, everything is achieved. It is a criterion of this success that there be a readiness to communicate with every human being encountered and that grief is felt whenever communication fails. Not merely an exchange of words, nor friendliness and sociability, but only the constant urge towards total revelation reaches the path of communication.”
~Karl Jaspers.
----
“Even the best institutions at the university are apt to deteriorate and to become distorted. Thus the very translation of thought into teachable form tends to impoverish its intellectual vitality. Once intellectual achievement is admitted into the body of accepted learning those achievements tend to assume an air of finality. Thus, it is merely a matter of convention at what point one subject ends and the other begins. It is possible, moreover, that an excellent scholar may not be able to find a place for himself within the established departmental divisions. A mediocre scholar may be preferred to him simply because his work fits into the traditional scheme. Any institution tends to consider itself an end in itself.”
----
“But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil--that is moral guilt.”
----
“The limits of science have always been the source of bitter disappointment when people expected something from science that it was not able to provide. Take the following examples: a man without faith seeking to find in science a substitute for his faith on which to build his life; a man unsatisfied by philosophy seeking an all-embracing universal truth in science; a spiritually shallow person growing aware of his own futility in the course of engaging in the endless reflections imposed by science. In every one of these cases, science begins as an object of blind idolatry and ends up as an object of hatred and
contempt. Disenchantment inevitably follows upon these and similar misconceptions. One question remains: What value can science possibly have when its limitations have become so painfully clear?”
----
“I live in a kind of tension between the will to say yes to my suffering, and my inability to utter this yes with complete sincerity.”
----
“I do not know which impulse was stronger in me when I began to think: the original thirst for knowledge or the urge to communicate with man. Knowledge attains its full meaning only through the bond that unites men; however, the urge to achieve agreement with another human being was so hard to satisfy. I was shocked by the lack of understanding, paralyzed, as it were, by every reconciliation in which what had gone before was not fully cleared up. Early in my life and then later again and again I was perplexed by people’s rigid inaccessibility and their failure to listen to reasons, their disregard of facts, their indifference which prohibited discussion, their defensive attitude which kept you at a distance and at the decisive moment buried any possibility of a close approach, and finally their shamelessness, that bares its own soul without reserve, as though no one were present. When ready assent occurred I remained unsatisfied, because it was not based on true insight but on yielding to persuasion; because it was the consequence of friendly cooperation, not a meeting of two selves. True, I knew the glory of friendship (in common studies, in the cordial atmosphere of home or countryside). But then came the moments of strangeness, as if human beings lived in different worlds. Steadily the consciousness of loneliness grew upon me in my youth, yet nothing seemed more pernicious to me than loneliness, especially the loneliness in the midst of social intercourse that deceives itself in a multitude of friendships. No urge seemed stronger to me than that for communication with others. If the never-completed movement of communication succeeds with but a single human being, everything is achieved. It is a criterion of this success that there be a readiness to communicate with every human being encountered and that grief is felt whenever communication fails. Not merely an exchange of words, nor friendliness and sociability, but only the constant urge towards total revelation reaches the path of communication.”
~Karl Jaspers.
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“Three things are required at a university: professional training, education of the whole man, research. For the university is simultaneously a professional school, a cultural center and a research institute. People have tried to force the university to choose between these three possibilities. They have asked what it is that we really expect the university to do. Since, so they say, it cannot do everything it ought to decide upon one of these three alternatives. It was even suggested that the university as such be dissolved, to be replaced by three special types of school: institutes for professional training, institutes for general education possibly involving a special staff, and research institutes. In the idea of the university, however, these three are indissolubly united. One cannot be cut off from the others without destroying the intellectual substance of the university, and without at the same time crippling itself. All three are factors of a living whole. By isolating them, the spirit of the university perishes.”
----
“Man's primary will to know struggles against the selfsatisfied formalism of empty learning which drugs man into
the illusory calm of fulfillment. It fights against empty intellectualism,
against nihilism which has ceased wanting anything and thus has ceased wanting to know. It battles against mediocrity which never takes stock of itself and which confuses knowledge with the mere learning of facts and <> The only satisfaction which man derives from a radical commitment to knowledge is the hope of advancing the frontier of knowledge to a point beyond which he cannot advance except by transcending knowledge itself.”
----
“Schumpeter remarked how pleased he was with the Russian Revolution. Socialism was now no longer a discussion on paper, but had to prove its viability. Max Weber responded in great agitation: Communism, at this stage in Russian development, was virtually a crime, the road would lead over unparalleled human misery and end in a terrible catastrophe. "Quite likely", Schumpeter answered, "but what a fine laboratory". "A laboratory filled with mounds of corpses", Weber answered heatedly.”
----
“To the intellect all else, in comparison with what is correct, counts only as feeling, subjectivity, instinct. In this division, apart from the bright world of the intellect, there is only the irrational, in which is lumped together, according to the point of view, what is despised or desired. The impulse which pursues real truth by thought springs from the dissatisfaction with what is merely correct. The division, spoken of previously, paralyses this impulse; it causes man to oscillate between the dogmatism of the intellect that transcends its limits and, as it were, the rapture of the vital, the chance of the moment, life. The soul becomes impoverished in all the multiplicity of disparate experience. Then truth disappears from the field of vision and is replaced by a variety of opinions which are hung on the skeleton of a supposedly rational pattern. Truth is infinitely more than scientific correctness.”
----
“We must all continuously recapture ourselves from indecision.”
----
“To philosophize is to learn to die – philosophizing is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.
~Karl Jaspers.
----
“Man's primary will to know struggles against the selfsatisfied formalism of empty learning which drugs man into
the illusory calm of fulfillment. It fights against empty intellectualism,
against nihilism which has ceased wanting anything and thus has ceased wanting to know. It battles against mediocrity which never takes stock of itself and which confuses knowledge with the mere learning of facts and <> The only satisfaction which man derives from a radical commitment to knowledge is the hope of advancing the frontier of knowledge to a point beyond which he cannot advance except by transcending knowledge itself.”
----
“Schumpeter remarked how pleased he was with the Russian Revolution. Socialism was now no longer a discussion on paper, but had to prove its viability. Max Weber responded in great agitation: Communism, at this stage in Russian development, was virtually a crime, the road would lead over unparalleled human misery and end in a terrible catastrophe. "Quite likely", Schumpeter answered, "but what a fine laboratory". "A laboratory filled with mounds of corpses", Weber answered heatedly.”
----
“To the intellect all else, in comparison with what is correct, counts only as feeling, subjectivity, instinct. In this division, apart from the bright world of the intellect, there is only the irrational, in which is lumped together, according to the point of view, what is despised or desired. The impulse which pursues real truth by thought springs from the dissatisfaction with what is merely correct. The division, spoken of previously, paralyses this impulse; it causes man to oscillate between the dogmatism of the intellect that transcends its limits and, as it were, the rapture of the vital, the chance of the moment, life. The soul becomes impoverished in all the multiplicity of disparate experience. Then truth disappears from the field of vision and is replaced by a variety of opinions which are hung on the skeleton of a supposedly rational pattern. Truth is infinitely more than scientific correctness.”
----
“We must all continuously recapture ourselves from indecision.”
----
“To philosophize is to learn to die – philosophizing is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.
~Karl Jaspers.
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"This philosopher is independent, first because he is without needs, free from the world of possessions and the rule of passions, he is an ascetic; second, because he is without fear, for he has seen through the illusory terrors of the religions; third, because he takes no part in government and politics and lives without ties, in peaceful retirement, a citizen of the world."
----
“That in fact all the people pay for all the acts of their government… is a mere empirical fact; that they know themselves liable is the first indication of their dawning political liberty. It is to the extent of the existence and recognition of this knowledge that freedom is real, not a mere outward claim put forth by unfree men.
The inner political unfreedom has the opposite feeling. It obeys on the one hand, and feels not guilty on the other. The feeling of guilt, which makes us accept liability, is the beginning of the inner upheaval which seeks to realize political liberty.”
~Karl Jaspers.
----
“That in fact all the people pay for all the acts of their government… is a mere empirical fact; that they know themselves liable is the first indication of their dawning political liberty. It is to the extent of the existence and recognition of this knowledge that freedom is real, not a mere outward claim put forth by unfree men.
The inner political unfreedom has the opposite feeling. It obeys on the one hand, and feels not guilty on the other. The feeling of guilt, which makes us accept liability, is the beginning of the inner upheaval which seeks to realize political liberty.”
~Karl Jaspers.
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"It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects."
-Nikola Tesla
-Nikola Tesla
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-Albert Einstein
-Albert Einstein
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