top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by German Authors
"Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has."
"The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men."
"Superstition is the poetry of life."
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
"Among such persons are those women who transform themselves into just that function of a man that is but weakly developed in him, and then become his purse, or his politics, or his social intercourse. Such beings maintain themselves best when they insert themselves in an alien organism; if they do not succeed they become vexed, irritated, and eat themselves up."
"This workshop where ideals are manufactured--it seems to me it stinks of so many lies."
"For fanaticism is the only form of willpower that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain."
"You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles whe na carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself.Ina man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill."
"Discussions should always be held just before going to bed, your rear protected by sleep. How painful, after an intellectual conversation, to have to go about with your mind so stirred up."
"To be young means to be original, to have remained nearer to the sources of life: it means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization, to dare - where others lack the courage- to plunge again into the elemental."
"Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is not inner discord between the private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all."
"Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."
"But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father."
"Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride."
"When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults."
"The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production."
"No revolution is made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind."
"I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself."
"Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions."
"We must admit thatlaw must be valid, not merely for men, but for all rational creatures generally, not merely under certain contingent conditions or with exceptions, but with absolute necessity."
"Amor Fati " "Love Your Fate, which is in fact your life."
"I have just got a new theory of eternity."
"Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens."
"Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism."
"Plus d'un qui n'a pu liberer ses propres chaines a su pourtant en liberer son ami."
"Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them."
"As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity."
"For him, behind every feeling and thought was the sense of the open door leading into nothingness. To be sure, he suffered from dread of many things, of madness, the police, insomnia, and also dread of death. But everything he dreaded he likewise desired and longed for at the same time. He was full of burning curiosity about suffering, destruction, persecution, madness and death."
"My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
"I myself must also say I believe it is true that in the end humanitarianism will triumph, only I fear that at the same time the world will be one big hospital and each person will be the other person's humane keeper."
"Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal."
"The key to education is the experience of beauty."
"You were too lazy to learn to dance until it was almost too late, and in the same way you were too lazy to learn to love. As for ideal and tragic love, that I don't doubt you can do marvellously- and all honour to you. Now you will learn to love a little in an ordinary human way."
"We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people."
"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game."
"So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus."
"The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe exists--and that one has to pay them back with sacrifices and accomplishments; one thus recognizes a debt that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength."
bottom of page