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Arthur Schopenhauer

193 quotes

“It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) first seen 1815 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815)
“Obit anus, abit onus.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement Schopenhauer wrote in Latin into his account book, after the death of a seamstress to whom he had made court-ordered payments of 15 thalers a quarter for over twenty years, after she had accused him of having …
“The New Testament, on the other hand, must be in some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian. It is its morality which places it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagonism to the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is the only possible point of connection between the two.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Christian System" (originally published 1851 in Parerga und Paralipomena); as translated in Religion: A Dialogue, and Other Essays by T. Bailey Saunders (1889), p. 105.
“In an essay on ‘“The Christian System,” he argued that the visions of the Old and New Testament are so unalike that the latter “‘must be in some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism and its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire. Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
“If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man’s property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227
“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 39; compare Heraclitus: Nothing endures but change.
“Christianity taught only what the whole of Asia knew already long before and even better.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“How every line is of such strong, determined, and consistent meaning! And on every page we encounter deep, original, lofty thoughts, while the whole world is suffused with a high and holy seriousness.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About Indian sacred scriptures. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition! It is the most profitable and elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The method of viewing things which proceeds in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason is the rational method, and it alone is valid and of use in practical life and in science. The method which looks away from the content of this principle is the method of genius, which is only valid and of use in art.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Zweiter Band, Ergänzungen zum dritten Buch, para. 36 (1859)
“For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol I, Ch. 4, The World As Will: Second Aspect, § 53, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958)
“Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. I, Ch. 4, The World As Will: Second Aspect, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958) p. 322
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) first seen 1844 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. II, Ch. III, para. 31 (On Genius), 1844
“My body and my will are one.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We see in tragedy the noblest men, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce forever all the pleasure of life and the aims till then pursued so keenly, or cheerfully and willingly give up life itself.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one inborn erroneous notion … that we exist in order to be happy … So long as we persist in this inborn error … the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence … hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of … disappointment.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a business that does not cover the costs.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wirklich ist jedes Kind gewissermaßen ein Genie, und jedes Genie gewissermaßen ein Kind.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol II: "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life", as translated by R. B. Haldane, and J. Kemp in The World as Will and Idea (1886), p. 389
“...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is—nothing.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works. - vol. II, p. 582 (as cited on p. 177 of Schopenhauer: A Biography)”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is Just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. " In India, our religions wIll never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian Wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Schopenhauer, Arthur The world as will and representation. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. New York, Dover Publications [c1969 - Volume I, & 63 p. 356-357. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduis…
“Thus, because Christian morals leave animals out of consideration … therefore in philosophical morals they are of course at once outlawed; they are merely "things," simply means to ends of any sort; and so they are good for vivisection, for deer-stalking, bull-fights, horse-races, etc., and they may be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy quarry carts. Shame on such a morality … which fails to recognize the Eternal Reality immanent in everything that has life, and shining forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man. This view, with the corollary that non-human living creatures are to be regarded merely as things, is at the root of the rough and altogether reckless treatment of them, which obtains in the West.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My basis is supported by the authority of the greatest moralist of modern times; for such, undoubtedly, J. J. Rousseau is,—that profound reader of the human heart, who drew his wisdom not from books, but from life, and intended his doctrine not for the professorial chair, but for humanity; he, the foe of all prejudice, the foster-child of nature, whom alone she endowed with the gift of being able to moralise without tediousness, because he hit the truth and stirred the heart.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No difference of rank, position, or birth, is so great as the gulf that separates 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! my head is too good for that; it 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.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A mother gave her children Aesop’s fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: This is no book for us; it’s much too childish and stupid. You can’t make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk; we’ve got beyond stories of that kind! In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of the future.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man’s body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect?”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 3
“The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 22
“If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 22–23
“Ueberhaupt aber bin ich allmälig der Meinung geworden, daß der erwähnte Nutzen der Kathederphilosophie von dem Nachtheil überwogen werde, den die Philosophie als Profession der Philosophie als freier Wahrheitsforschung, oder die Philosophie im Auftrage der Regierung der Philosophie im Auftrage der Natur und der Menschheit bringt.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 151, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 139
“Zuvörderst nämlich wird eine Regierung nicht Leute besolden, um Dem, was sie durch tausend von ihr angestellte Priester, oder Religionslehrer, von allen Kanzeln verkünden läßt, direkt, oder auch nur indirekt, zu widersprechen. … Daher der Grundsatz improbant secus docentes.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, pp. 152–153, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 139
“... deshalb ich diese als die Metaphysik des Volkes bezeichnet habe.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140
“Man sieht daraus, daß in der Universitäts-philosophie die Wahrheit nur eine sekundäre Stelle einnimmt und, wenn es gefordert wird, aufstehn muß, einer andern Eigenschaft Platz zu machen.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 152, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140