Karl Jaspers Quotes

38 quotes in 589 categories

• On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise…
• Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.
• Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through…
• The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself…
• When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself.
• The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and…
• It has become obligatory to fulfil a function which shall in some way be regarded as useful to the masses...Even an articulated mass always tends…
• There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is,…
• Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.
• Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.
• The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student…
• Greatness of mind becomes an object of love only when the power at work in it itself has a noble character
• The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental…
• I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's…
• Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter…
• The soul of a landscape, the spirits of the elements, the genius of every place will be revealed to a loving view of nature.
• Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
• We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.
• What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.
• The moment is the sole reality.

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