German author quotes Quotes

“Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.”

“There is nothing higher than reason.”

“Pressure makes diamonds”

“We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having; and that on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life”

“Important thing to realize is the world is not here to make me happy. When you don't demand that the situation, or place, or person should make you happy, then actually the situation, place, or person is quite satisfying.”

“The wealth that cannot be administered is a burden.”

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.”

“A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.”

“Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.”

“Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.”

“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death.”

“A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.”

“Given the millions of billions of Earth-like planets, life elsewhere in the Universe without a doubt, does exist. In the vastness of the Universe we are not alone.”

“Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.”

“The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.”

“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing...”

“It is always delightful when a great and beautiful idea proves to be consonant with reality.”

“Once bliss becomes normal it's no longer bliss, it's just peace.”

“Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not possess a genius for ornamentation if she did not also possessan instinct for the secondary role.”

“It has therewith come to be recognized that the history of moral valuations is at the same time the history of an error, the error of responsibility, which is based upon the error of the freedom of will.”

“In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.”

“Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.”

“Time is an illusion.”

“Philosophy studies the world, but the point is to change it.”

“The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.”

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.”

“The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.”

“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”

“All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew.”

“There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.”

“In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.”

“To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower in the scale. He makes distinctions only as each case comes before him, and under the pressure of necessity, as, for example, when it falls to him to decide which of two lives he must sacrifice in order to preserve the other. But all through this series of decisions he is conscious of acting on subjective grounds and arbitrarily, and knows that he bears the responsibility for the life which is sacrificed.”

“It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.”

“Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”

“After having been lost in the world, suddenly, through the pressure of suffering, the realization comes that the answers may not be found out there in worldly attainment and in the future. That's an important point for many people to reach. That sense of deep crisis-when the world as they have known it, and the sense of self that they have known that is identified with the world, become meaningless.”

“Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable and is always daydreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interests of all if he were removed from school immediately.”

“Thus the will to power strives towards oppositions, towards displeasure. There is a will to suffering at the foundation of all organic life (contrary to "happiness" as "goal").”

“Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue.... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles.”

“Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will.”

“Mankind must give up war in the Atomic Era. What is at stake is the life or death of humanity.”

“As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.”

“The day is for mistake and error, sequence of time for success and carrying out. The one who anticipates is master of the day.”

“Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.”

“Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.”

“Creating-that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.”

“My worthy friend, gray are all theoriesAnd green alone Life's golden tree.”

“The moment you put a mental label on another human being, you can no longer truly relate to that person. . . It then becomes possible to perpetrate any act of violence.”

“The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust.”

“Riches can all be lost, but that happiness in your own heart can only be veiled, and it will bring you happiness again, as long as you live.”

“Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs around them.”