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Quotes by German Authors
"The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."
"One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare."
"Consciousness is a vast ocean and thinking is the waves & ripples on the surface of the ocean. Every wave & ripple has a very short lived life - it is very fleeting Do not identify with your thoughts - continued indentification with the stream of thinking leads to a very serious dysfunction in ones sense of identity."
"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding."
"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight."
"I am the Roman Emperor, and am above grammar."
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
"Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home."
"I don't believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn't say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It's an ongoing process."
"Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me."
"Even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes."
"Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes."
"What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action."
"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."
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
"The state exists for man,not man for the state.The same may be said ofscience. These are old phrases,coined by people who saw in human individuality the highest human value .I would hesitate to repeat them,were it not for the ever recurring danger that they may be forgotten,especially in these days of organization and stereotypes."
"Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy."
"One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way."
"The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality."
"Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom."
"Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer."
"How surely gravity's law,strong as an ocean current,takes hold of the smallest thingand pulls it toward the heart of the world.Each thing---each stone, blossom, child---is held in place.Only we, in our arrogance,push out beyond what we each belong tofor some empty freedom.If we surrenderedto earth's intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.Instead we entangle ourselvesin knots of our own makingand struggle, lonely and confused.So like children, we begin againto learn from the things,because they are in God's heart;they have never left him.This is what the things can teach us:to fall,patiently to trust our heaviness.Even a bird has to do thatbefore he can fly."
"Man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
"He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted."
"The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being."
"Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what 'truthfulness' is."
"I wish I had had a great disappointment, a real one."
"No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days."
"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime."
"Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it."
"The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value."
"From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."
"We want our buildings to work like a machine that will create a pleasurable environment."
"No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created for us."
"To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything."
"Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?"
"Those who do not attempt to appear more than they are but are simply themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who truly make a difference in this world."
"What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal."
"One does not only wish to be understood when one writes, one wishes just as surely not to be understood."
"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth."
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