Johann Georg Hamann

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.

— Johann Georg Hamann

Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs…

— Johann Georg Hamann

What for others is style, for me is soul.

— Johann Georg Hamann

I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter

— Johann Georg Hamann

“I look upon the finest logical demonstration the way a sensible girl regards a love letter.”

— Johann Georg Hamann

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the…

— Johann Georg Hamann

The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa.

— Johann Georg Hamann

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.…

— Johann Georg Hamann

Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living…

— Johann Georg Hamann

Physics is nothing but the ABC's. Nature is an equation with an unknown, a Hebrew word which is written only with consonants…

— Johann Georg Hamann

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

— Johann Georg Hamann

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit…

— Johann Georg Hamann

Indeed, if a chief question does remain: how is the power to think possible? - The power to think right and left,…

— Johann Georg Hamann

When I rest my feet my mind also ceases to function.

— Johann Georg Hamann

“While we are aiming at clear ideas, the food gets cold and tasteless.”

— Johann Georg Hamann

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves

— Johann Georg Hamann

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind…

— Johann Georg Hamann

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him

— Johann Georg Hamann

“If sensibility and understanding as the two branches of human knowledge spring from one common root, to what end such a violent,…

— Johann Georg Hamann

The thirst for vengeance was the beautiful nature which Homer imitated

— Johann Georg Hamann

Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it.

— Johann Georg Hamann

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home?

— Johann Georg Hamann

Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert.

— Johann Georg Hamann

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with…

— Johann Georg Hamann

“Do either nothing or everything; the mediocre, the moderate, is repellent to me: I prefer an extreme.”

— Johann Georg Hamann