Sourced and curated.

When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.

Narcissus and Goldmund · 1930

★ 1.0

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

Erich Fromm

1956

★ 1.0

It's more important to click with people than to click the shutter.

Small is beautiful.

E.F. Schumacher

1973

★ 1.0

Obituary · Magazine

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Life Magazine · 1995

★ 1.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life.

Friedrich Engels

Anti-Duhring · 1878

★ 1.1

I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.1

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

1931

★ 1.1

Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; [..] concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

1931

★ 1.1

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two thirds of the people of the earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored.

1945

★ 1.1

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it.

Martin Heidegger

1954

★ 1.1

Newspaper

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

1954

★ 1.1

Interview

Lucian Freud

★ 1.1

I by no means owe my works to my own wisdom alone, but to a thousand things and persons around me, who provided me with material.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

1832

★ 1.2

Martin Luther

1538

★ 1.3

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

If you look at a dog following the advice of his nose, he traverses a patch of land in a completely unplottable manner. And he invariably finds what he's looking for.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 1.3

Interview

W.G. Sebald

2001

★ 1.7

The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence.

Albert, Prince Consort

1851

★ 1.8

No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that-one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.8

We come out of the dark and go into the dark again, and in between lie the experiences of our life. But the beginning and end, birth and death, we do not experience; they have no subjective character, they fall entirely in the category of objective events, and that's that.

The Magic Mountain · 1924

★ 1.8

For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as inextricably as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.

The Magic Mountain · 1924

★ 1.8

As for others and the world around him he never ceased in his heroic and earnest endeavor to love them, to be just to them, to do them no harm, for the love of his neighbor was as deeply in him as the hatred of himself, and so his whole life was an example that love of one's neighbor is not possible without love of one's self, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul.

Steppenwolf · 1927

★ 1.8

Scientific literature

Max Planck

1936

★ 1.8

Psychological literature

Man's nature, his passions and anxieties, are a cultural product; as a matter of fact, man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of which we call history.

Erich Fromm

1941

★ 1.8

Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go-and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

Wernher von Braun

1958

★ 1.8

Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act.

Joseph Beuys

Artforum · 1969

★ 1.8

Religious literature

The highest sacrifice is a broken and contrite heart; the highest wisdom is that which is found in the Torah; the noblest of all ornaments is modesty; and the most beautiful thing that man can do, is to forgive a wrong.

Eleazar of Worms

1200

★ 1.9

To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.

No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.

The World as Will and Idea · 1818

★ 1.9

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

1871

★ 1.9

Becoming a father isn't difficult, But it's very difficult to be a father.

Wilhelm Busch

1877

★ 1.9

I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

Steppenwolf · 1927

★ 1.9

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear.

Narcissus and Goldmund · 1930

★ 1.9

In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than the glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.

Minima Moralia · 1951

★ 1.9

Essay · Philosophical literature

1959

★ 1.9

To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.

Joseph Beuys

Artforum · 1969

★ 1.9

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.

Wernher von Braun

1973

★ 1.9

Now the summer came to pass And flowers through the grass Joyously sprang, While all the tribes of birds sang.

Walther von der Vogelweide

1230

★ 1.9

Drive out prejudices through the door, and they will return through the window.

Frederick the Great

1771

★ 1.9

Essay · Philosophical literature

Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due course will make it one of its own prejudices.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1821

★ 1.9

National anthem · Song

Germany above all.

August Heinrich Hoffman

1841

★ 1.9

Economic literature · Political literature

Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them…"If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire."

Friedrich Engels

The Condition of the Working Class in England · 1845

★ 1.9

The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.

Richard Wagner

1851

★ 1.9

Personal journal

I believe that humor is a part of beauty.

Max Beckmann

1903

★ 1.9

Do not overlook the little joys!

1905

★ 1.9

You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.

Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

Novel · Philosophical literature

Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped him. They were no longer a game and a toy. They had become a chain and a burden.

Siddhartha · 1922

★ 1.9

Novel · Philosophical literature

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.

Siddhartha · 1922

★ 1.9

Novel · Philosophical literature

Siddhartha · 1922

★ 1.9

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.

The Magic Mountain · 1924

★ 1.9

Food comes first, then morals.

1928

★ 1.9

If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

1929

★ 1.9

Essay · Magazine

1930

★ 1.9

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration.

1939

★ 1.9

Truly, I am living in a time of darkness.

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve; and it is not fastidious in its choice of a leader.

1939

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

The grand aim of all science [is] to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms.

1943

★ 1.9

Scientific literature

There are few things of greater advantage than learning to appreciate the strong points of your opponents.

1948

★ 1.9

For, where God built a church, there the devil would also build a chapel... In such sort is the devil always God's ape.

★ 1.9

Martin Luther

1546

★ 2.0

Novel · Epistolary novel

Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

The Sorrows of Young Werther · 1774

★ 2.0

Novel · Epistolary novel

It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical arsenal of old Europe.

The Sorrows of Young Werther · 1774

★ 2.0

Lecture · Philosophical literature

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1830

★ 2.0

History is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.

Political literature · Economic literature

The Holy Family · 1845

★ 2.0

Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

1859

★ 2.0

The pursuit of scientific truth, detached from the practical interests of everyday life, ought to be treated as sacred by every government.

1934

★ 2.0

In order to be content men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers.

1940

★ 2.0

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Common sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen.

1945

★ 2.0

Scientific literature

If A is a success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z. Work is X; Y is play; and Z is keeping your mouth shut.

1948

★ 2.0

Newspaper

1950

★ 2.0

The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.

1955

★ 2.0

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

1955

★ 2.0

Only the soul that loves is happy.

1788

★ 2.1

Let no one think that he can conquer the first impressions of his youth.

He who does not know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

1796

★ 2.1

Superstition is the poetry of life.

1821

★ 2.1

Political literature · Economic literature

1823

★ 2.1

Society does not consist of individuals; it expresses the sum of connections and relationships in which individuals find themselves.

Autobiography and memoir · Philosophical literature

Grundrisse · 1883

★ 2.1

What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Ecce Homo · 1908

★ 2.1

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

1929

★ 2.1

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Of the two evils the lesser is always to be chosen.

1940

★ 2.1

Religious literature

Thomas a Kempis

1427

★ 2.2

We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power · 1888

★ 2.2

Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.

Faust · 1808

★ 2.3

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols · 1889

★ 2.3

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship · 1786

★ 2.8

Many a crown shines spotless now That yet was deeply sullied in the winning.

Friedrich Schiller

The Death of Wallenstein · 1798

★ 2.8

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Elective Affinities · 1808

★ 2.8

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

Minima Moralia · 1951

★ 2.8

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

On Women · 1819

★ 2.9

What a Man Is · 1851

★ 2.9

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

1929

★ 2.9

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Faust · 1808

★ 3.1

And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand! no wiser than before.

Faust · 1808

★ 3.1

Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

The identity crisis... Occurs in that period of the life cycle when each of you must forge for himself some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of his childhood and the hopes of his anticipated adulthood.

Lotte in Weimar · 1939

★ 3.4

Erik Erikson

1958

★ 3.4

But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other. And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us.

Gertrude · 1910

★ 3.5

If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless.

Gertrude · 1910

★ 3.5

Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful, that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness.

Gertrude · 1910

★ 3.5

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

Love must not entreat... Or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

And waiting means hurrying on ahead, it means regarding time and the present moment not as a boon, but an obstruction; it means making their actual content null and void, by mentally overleaping them. Waiting we say is long. We might just as well-or more accurately-say it is short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them as such.

Political literature · Philosophical literature

1924

★ 3.5

All genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i. E., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being.

Carl Schmitt

The Concept of the Political · 1932

★ 3.5

Political literature

Little do they know that they meet under an empty sky from which the gods have departed.

Hans Morgenthau

1948

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

Carl Schurz

1872

★ 3.5

Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Peter Camenzind · 1904

★ 3.5

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

One never reaches home... But wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

The Magic Mountain · 1924

★ 3.5

Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.

Steppenwolf · 1927

★ 3.5

Even the most insensitive hit song enthusiast cannot always escape the feeling that the child with a sweet tooth comes to know in the candy store.

Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.

1938

★ 3.5

Psychological literature

Erich Fromm

1941

★ 3.5

We are now brought face to face with a tyranny which holds out the threat of becoming, thanks to "the conquest of nature" and in particular of human nature, what no earlier tyranny ever became: perpetual and universal.

Leo Strauss

1948

★ 3.5

Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?

I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.

1956

★ 3.5

Film · Documentary (film)

Werner Herzog

Grizzly Man · 2005

★ 3.5

Religious literature · Philosophical literature

The end justifies the means.

Hermann Busenbaum

1650

★ 3.6

Lecture · Philosophical literature

Architecture in general is frozen music.

Friedrich von Schelling

1803

★ 3.6

Where the danger is, also grows the saving power.

Friedrich Holderlin

1808

★ 3.6

Lecture · Philosophical literature

What experience and history teach is this-that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1830

★ 3.6

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

Counsels and Maxims · 1851

★ 3.6

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we have, the thirstier we become, and the same is true of fame.

On Women · 1851

★ 3.6

1851

★ 3.6

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

1931

★ 3.6

Reach for the book: It is a weapon.

1935

★ 3.6

War is like love, it always finds a way.

I herewith commission you to carry out all preparations with regard to... A total solution of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence.

1939

★ 3.6

Hermann Goring

1941

★ 3.6

No one can be good for long when goodness is not in demand.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

1943

★ 3.6

Magazine

Henry Kissinger

1969

★ 3.6

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

Henry Kissinger

Reflections on Containment · 1994

★ 3.6

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style: when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.

St. Ambrose

St. Augustine, Letter to Casulanus · 397

★ 3.7

So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else.

Martin Luther

1566

★ 3.7

Novel · Epistolary novel

No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

Noble be man, Helpful and good! For that alone Sets him apart From every other creature On earth.

The Sorrows of Young Werther · 1774

★ 3.7

It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed.

1783

★ 3.7

Play · Tragedy (play)

Friedrich Schiller

1787

★ 3.7

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

1790

★ 3.7

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Studies in Pessimism · 1851

★ 3.7