61 quotes
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it.
Culture and Value (1980)
People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them — that does not occur to them.
Culture and Value (1980)
The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.
Culture and Value (1980)
The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.
Culture and Value (1980)
If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.
Culture and Value (1980)
Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.
Culture and Value (1980)
I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)
Culture and Value (1980)
There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man—but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.
Culture and Value (1980)
Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice.
(Now any ass has these pictures available to use in "explaining" symptoms of an illness.
Culture and Value (1980)
You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.
Culture and Value (1980)
The purely corporeal can be uncanny. Compare the way angels and devils are portrayed. So-called "miracles" must be connected with this. A miracle must be, as it were, a sacred gesture.
Culture and Value (1980)
"Fare well!"
"A whole world of pain is contained in these words." How can it be contained in them? — It is bound up in them. The words are like an acorn from which an oak tree can grow.
Culture and Value (1980)
One might say: art shows us the miracles of nature. It is based on the concept of the miracles of nature.
Culture and Value (1980)
Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: “Let’s have done with it now,” and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.
Culture and Value (1980)
You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. ... And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.
Culture and Value (1980)
Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
Culture and Value (1980)
If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.
Culture and Value (1980)
Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so easy and cozy, why should God in his Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in motion and threatened eternal punishments? — Question: But then in that case why is this Scriptures so unclear?
Culture and Value (1980)
If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.
Culture and Value (1980)
Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" — It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said "this is a man," "this is a house," etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?
Culture and Value (1980)