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So far as happiness is concerned it matters very little what one wants; the main thing is that one should get it. Besides, zoology makes it clear that a sum of reduced individuals may very well form a totality of genius.

— Robert Musil

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More quotes by Robert Musil

Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.

Mathematical man (1913)

We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul.

Helpless Europe (1922)

Modernism is the attempt to permeate religion with middle-class reason.

Mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.

In their field they [mathematicians] do what we ought to be doing in ours. Therein lies the significant lesson … of their existence. They are an analogy for the intellectual of the future.

Mathematical man (1913)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Musil (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.