Founders Quote by Karl Jaspers

The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past,…

— Karl Jaspers

Nietzsche's ideas and plans: for example, the idea of giving up the whole wretched academic world to form a secular monastic community.

— Karl Jaspers

What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them…

— Karl Jaspers

“But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands…

— Karl Jaspers

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

— Karl Jaspers

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history…

— Karl Jaspers

We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.

— Karl Jaspers

The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between…

— Karl Jaspers

What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.

— Karl Jaspers

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

— Karl Jaspers

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

— Karl Jaspers

“Tragedy occurs whenever awareness exceeds power; and particularly where awareness of a major need exceeds the power to satisfy it.”

— Karl Jaspers