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Quotes by German Authors
"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."
"Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men."
"You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause."
"Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience."
"Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don't let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it."
"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen few in pursuit of the goal."
"I've been to Paris France and I've been to Paris Paramount. Paris Paramount is better."
"Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species."
"To those who do not love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation at last."
"Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children."
"PLease, do not visualize that we exist above you such as in heaven. The concepts above and below are products of your mind. The soul does not swing upwards. It exists in the center and orients itself in every direction."
"Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist."
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are."
"My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen."
"Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists."
"Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper."
"On the other hand, ethnic psychology must always come to the assistance of individual psychology, when the developmental forms of the complex mental processes are in question."
"Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt."
"He who seeks for methods without having a definite problem in mind seeks in the most part in vain."
"The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer."
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
"I will say nothing... against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever."
"The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters."
"For the victor peace means the preservation of the position of power which he has secured. For the vanquished it means resigning himself to the position left to him."
"To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin."
"In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations."
"Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual."
"But it is a fact that within Jewry there exists a sect which engaged in these murders."
"A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, the longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home."
"There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena."
"My landlady, who is only a tailor's widow, reads her Milton; and tells me, that her late husband first fell in love with her on this very account: because she read Milton with such proper emphasis."
"Even when I was very depressed, I could hold on to something. It seems that I have always had that streak of gold that I could hold on to."
"The real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development."
"Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties."
"Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves."
"Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous"
"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
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