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It is the characteristic way of the wise to speak indirectly, to talk in figures, proverbs, and puzzles. All the sages of pre-modern cultures seem to share a belief in the ineffectiveness of open statements, the superficiality of direct communication. Wisdom, it seems, would not be so rare and difficult a thing if it could simply be “told” by one person to another.

— Arthur Melzer

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More quotes by Arthur Melzer

The philosophic life—the radically personal effort to see life whole—can never be genuinely pursued as a collective enterprise of specialists.

One cannot philosophize in public any more than one can make love there.

Only a person fully in touch with the irrational temptations buried within him has a chance of becoming genuinely rational.

The philosophical writer stands in danger of harming his readers in the very act of trying to help them, by fostering an unhealthy presumption, passivity, and dependence.

Intellectual humility and the keen sense of our ignorance are the necessary starting points for genuine philosophical development; therefore, books—even as they transmit brilliant philosophical insights—undercut philosophy at its root.

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