Quotes · Skopia

261 quotes

Art9 quotes

The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom. — Friedrich Schiller · 1794 Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1840 Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess! — Ludwig van Beethoven · 1810 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. — Theodor Adorno · 1938 We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1888 To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. — Joseph Beuys · 1969 All 9 quotes →

History7 quotes

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848 Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. — Karl Marx · 1852 Who built the Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?... Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished Did the masons go? — Bertolt Brecht · 1936 What I did that was new was to prove... That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. — Karl Marx · 1852 The history of things that didn’t happen has never been written. — Henry Kissinger · 1972 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 All 7 quotes →

Love7 quotes

Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength. — Theodor Adorno · 1951 I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774 Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure. — Hermann Hesse · 1904 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1919 Only the soul that loves is happy. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1788 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1927 All 7 quotes →

War7 quotes

War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. — Karl Von Clausewitz · 1833 God has pity on kindergarten children. He has less pity on school children. And on grownups he has no pity at all, he leaves them alone, and sometimes they must crawl on all fours in the burning sand to reach the first-aid station covered with blood. — Yehuda Amichai · 1955 Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and war is a link in God's world order. In him, the noblest virtues of man, courage and renunciation, devotion to duty and willingness to sacrifice, unfold with the institution of life. Without the war, the world would become bogged down in materialism. — Helmuth von Moltke the Elder · 1880 War is like love, it always finds a way. — Bertolt Brecht · 1939 The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. — Henry Kissinger · 1969 As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. — Albert Einstein · 1945 All 7 quotes →

Creativity6 quotes

One must have chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883 The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. — Albert Einstein · 1930 A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. — Albert Einstein · 1949 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1910 Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein · 1929 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

Political theory6 quotes

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883 The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878 Politics is the art of the possible. — Otto von Bismarck · 1867 In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. — Karl Marx · 1848 The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848 All genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i. E., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being. — Carl Schmitt · 1932

Politics6 quotes

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848 From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883 The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878 Politics is the art of the possible. — Otto von Bismarck · 1867 The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848 The pursuit of scientific truth, detached from the practical interests of everyday life, ought to be treated as sacred by every government. — Albert Einstein · 1934

Character5 quotes

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1889 I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that Fate and character are the same conception. — Novalis · 1802 Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1790 No one can be good for long when goodness is not in demand. — Bertolt Brecht · 1943 Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. — Albert Einstein · 1955

Class conflict5 quotes

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848 The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848 The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. — Karl Marx · 1848 In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. — Karl Marx · 1848 What I did that was new was to prove... That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. — Karl Marx · 1852

Communism5 quotes

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883 A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. — Karl Marx · 1848 The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878 The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848 What I did that was new was to prove... That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. — Karl Marx · 1852

Decline of religion5 quotes

God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882 "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers!" — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882 Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…it is the opium of the people. — Karl Marx · 1883 We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. — Pope Benedict XVI · 2005 Little do they know that they meet under an empty sky from which the gods have departed. — Hans Morgenthau · 1948

Music5 quotes

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. — Theodor Adorno · 1938 Without music, life would be a mistake. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1889 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 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. — Thomas Mann · 1924 Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. — Martin Luther · 1538

Personal growth5 quotes

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. — Hermann Hesse · 1910 Let no one think that he can conquer the first impressions of his youth. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1796 Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. — Albert Einstein · 1955 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1919 I'm only trying to do what I can't do. — Lucian Freud

Science5 quotes

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. — Albert Einstein · 1936 The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking. — Albert Einstein · 1936 Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. — Albert Einstein · 1940 The pursuit of scientific truth, detached from the practical interests of everyday life, ought to be treated as sacred by every government. — Albert Einstein · 1934 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. — Albert Einstein · 1948

The human condition5 quotes

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883 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. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1910 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. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774 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. — Thomas Mann · 1924

God4 quotes

Morality4 quotes

The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1887 Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882 The end justifies the means. — Hermann Busenbaum · 1650 Food comes first, then morals. — Bertolt Brecht · 1928

Religion4 quotes

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…it is the opium of the people. — Karl Marx · 1883 Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. — Albert Einstein · 1940 All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life. — Friedrich Engels · 1878 The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution. — Max Weber · 1917

Authenticity3 quotes

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. — Hermann Hesse · 1910 I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? — Hermann Hesse · 1919 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1919

Being in love3 quotes

Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1895 He who doesn't see his lover's faults as virtues is not in love. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1832 I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774

Capitalism3 quotes

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. — Karl Marx · 1848 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 · 1845 Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past. — Theodor Adorno · 1959

Death3 quotes

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life. — Bertolt Brecht · 1931 A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. — Thomas Mann · 1924 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1930

Effects of the past3 quotes

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. — Karl Marx · 1852 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. — Albert Einstein · 1930 I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. — Hermann Hesse · 1919

Freedom3 quotes

The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom. — Friedrich Schiller · 1794 Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. — Heinrich Heine · 1821 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

Happiness3 quotes

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright. — Walter Benjamin · 1979 The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851 In order to be content men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers. — Albert Einstein · 1940

Human nature3 quotes

God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882 Drive out prejudices through the door, and they will return through the window. — Frederick the Great · 1771 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

International politics3 quotes

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security. — Henry Kissinger · 1994 Little do they know that they meet under an empty sky from which the gods have departed. — Hans Morgenthau · 1948 As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. — Albert Einstein · 1945

Knowledge3 quotes

Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. — Hermann Hesse · 1922 Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein · 1929 Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. — Hermann Hesse · 1922

Life3 quotes

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. — Albert Einstein · 1930 All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808 Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life. — Bertolt Brecht · 1931

Moral relativism3 quotes

We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. — Pope Benedict XVI · 2005 The end justifies the means. — Hermann Busenbaum · 1650 Food comes first, then morals. — Bertolt Brecht · 1928

Sourced and curated.