Quotes · Skopia

261 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·Germany✕clear

To put it in one word: I believe that Judaism knows nothing of revealed religion, in the sense in which this is understood by Christians. The Israelites possess divine legislation.

Moses Mendelssohn

1783

★ 1.0

Religious literature · Philosophical literature

Maximilien Robespierre was nothing but the hand of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the bloody hand that drew from the womb of time the body whose soul Rousseau had created.

1834

★ 1.0

The word "freedom" means for me not a point of departure but a genuine point of arrival. The point of departure is defined by the word "order." Freedom cannot exist without the concept of order.

Prince Metternich

1859

★ 1.0

The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.

1917

★ 1.0

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

Philosophical literature

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

1956

★ 1.0

Small is beautiful.

E.F. Schumacher

1973

★ 1.0

Obituary · Magazine

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

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

Novel · Coming of age story

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.

Albert Einstein

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.

Albert Einstein

1931

★ 1.1

Interview · Magazine

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.

Albert Einstein

1945

★ 1.1

Philosophical literature

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

Martin Heidegger

1954

★ 1.1

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.

Albert Einstein

1954

★ 1.1

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

★ 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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1832

★ 1.2

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

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.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 1.3

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.

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

Novel · Coming of age story

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.

Steppenwolf · 1927

★ 1.8

Scientific literature

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.

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.

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

Interview · Magazine

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

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

Philosophical literature

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.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea · 1818

★ 1.9

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

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

1871

★ 1.9

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

1877

★ 1.9

Novel · Coming of age story

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

Novel · Coming of age story

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

Philosophical literature

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

Minima Moralia · 1951

★ 1.9

Essay · Philosophical literature

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

1959

★ 1.9

Interview · Magazine

To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.

Artforum · 1969

★ 1.9

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