There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle [...]
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
Wittgenstein
Not predestined for knowledge. – There is a stupid humility that is by no means rare, and those afflicted with it are altogether unfit to become votaries of knowledge. For as soon as a person of this type perceives something striking, he turns on his heels, as it were, and says to himself, ‘You have [...]
I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself: ‘I destroy, I destroy, I destroy –’
Wittgenstein
“If a workman were sure to dream for twelve straight hours every night that he was king,” said Pascal, “I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreamt for twelve hours every night that he was a workman.” In fact, because of the way that myth takes it for granted [...]
If the philosophers were in a position to discover the truth, who among them would take an interest in it? Each knows well that his system is no better founded that the others. But he maintains it because it is his. There is not a single one of them who, if he came to know [...]
Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think, nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought. And our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men
What philosophy is as such cannot be answered immediately. If it were so easy to agree about a definite concept of philosophy, one would only need to analyze this concept to see oneself at once in possession of a philosophy of universal validity. The point is this: philosophy is not something with which our mind, [...]
Man lives by belief; by logic he can only at best long to live.
Thomas Carlyle
Respectfully offer up with me a lock of hair to the means of the holy rejected Spinoza! The high world spirit permeated him, the infinite was his beginning and end, the universe his only and eternal love; in holy innocence and deep humility he was reflected in the eternal world and saw how he too [...]
