The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe36 quotes
One lives but once in this world. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1787Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1819The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808Who strives always to the utmost,
For him there is salvation. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere!" — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774All 36 quotes →Friedrich Nietzsche29 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 · 1882What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1889"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 · 1882He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1886Life always gets harder toward the summit-the cold increases, responsibility increases. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1895This is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883All 29 quotes →Albert Einstein27 quotes
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. — Albert Einstein · 1901Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. — Albert Einstein · 1930The 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 · 1930The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. — Albert Einstein · 1936The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking. — Albert Einstein · 1936I never think of the future—it comes soon enough. — Albert Einstein · 1930All 27 quotes →Hermann Hesse24 quotes
Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. — Hermann Hesse · 1922I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself. — Hermann Hesse · 1919One never reaches home... But wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time. — Hermann Hesse · 1919Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure. — Hermann Hesse · 1904Solitude 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1927Every 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. — Hermann Hesse · 1919All 24 quotes →Karl Marx18 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. — Karl Marx · 1848A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. — Karl Marx · 1848Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…it is the opium of the people. — Karl Marx · 1883All 18 quotes →Arthur Schopenhauer10 quotes
The man of talent is like the marksman who hits a mark the others cannot hit; the man of genius is like the marksman who hits a mark they cannot even see. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1819Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851All 10 quotes →Martin Luther10 quotes
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging. — Martin Luther · 1569Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but-more frequently than not-struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God. — Martin Luther · 1569A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing. — Martin Luther · 1529What can only be taught by the rod and with blows will not lead to much good; they will not remain pious any longer than the rod is behind them. — Martin Luther · 1529The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees. — Martin Luther · 1526A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing. — Martin Luther · 1529All 10 quotes →Thomas Mann9 quotes
Beauty can pierce one like a pain. — Thomas Mann · 1901Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century beings it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. — Thomas Mann · 1924A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries. — Thomas Mann · 1924Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. — Thomas Mann · 1924And 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. — Thomas Mann · 1924Hold 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. — Thomas Mann · 1939All 9 quotes →Bertolt Brecht8 quotes
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 · 1936Reach for the book: It is a weapon. — Bertolt Brecht · 1935War is like love, it always finds a way. — Bertolt Brecht · 1939No one can be good for long when goodness is not in demand. — Bertolt Brecht · 1943Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life. — Bertolt Brecht · 1931Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another? — Bertolt Brecht · 1956All 8 quotes →Friedrich Schiller6 quotes
The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom. — Friedrich Schiller · 1794Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. — Friedrich Schiller · 1801What's not forbidden to do make bold. — Friedrich Schiller · 1798Who reflects too much will accomplish little. — Friedrich Schiller · 1804It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed. — Friedrich Schiller · 1787Many a crown shines spotless now
That yet was deeply sullied in the winning. — Friedrich Schiller · 1798Theodor Adorno6 quotes
Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength. — Theodor Adorno · 1951To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. — Theodor Adorno · 1951Even 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 · 1938For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. — Theodor Adorno · 1951In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than the glorification of the splendid system that makes them so. — Theodor Adorno · 1951Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past. — Theodor Adorno · 1959Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel5 quotes
We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1832The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1832What 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 · 1830It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical arsenal of old Europe. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1830Thus 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 · 1821Henry Kissinger4 quotes
Power is the great aphrodisiac. — Henry Kissinger · 1971The history of things that didn’t happen has never been written. — Henry Kissinger · 1972A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security. — Henry Kissinger · 1994The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. — Henry Kissinger · 1969Thomas a Kempis4 quotes
They consider the deed but God weighs the motive. — Thomas a Kempis · 1418For man proposes, but God disposes. — Thomas a Kempis · 1427Oh how quickly the glory of the world passes away! — Thomas a Kempis · 1427Of the two evils the lesser is always to be chosen. — Thomas a Kempis · 1427Erich Fromm3 quotes
Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. — Erich Fromm · 1941Man'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 · 1941Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you." — Erich Fromm · 1956Friedrich Engels3 quotes
The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878Naturally, 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 · 1845All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life. — Friedrich Engels · 1878W.G. Sebald3 quotes
From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fires still spread. — W.G. Sebald · 1995We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious. — W.G. Sebald · 2001If 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. — W.G. Sebald · 2001E.F. Schumacher2 quotes
It was not the power of the Spaniards that destroyed the Aztec Empire but the disbelief of the Aztecs in themselves. — E.F. Schumacher · 1962Small is beautiful. — E.F. Schumacher · 1973Frederick the Great2 quotes
God is always with the strongest battalions. — Frederick the Great · 1760Drive out prejudices through the door, and they will return through the window. — Frederick the Great · 1771Heinrich Heine2 quotes
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. — Heinrich Heine · 1821Maximilien 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. — Heinrich Heine · 1834Helmuth von Moltke the Elder2 quotes
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 · 1880No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength. — Helmuth von Moltke the Elder · 1871Hermann Goring2 quotes
Submit to me as soon as possible a draft showing... Measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question. — Hermann Goring · 1941I 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. — Hermann Goring · 1941Joseph Beuys2 quotes
To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. — Joseph Beuys · 1969Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act. — Joseph Beuys · 1969Martin Heidegger2 quotes
Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man. — Martin Heidegger · 1951Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. — Martin Heidegger · 1954Werner Heisenberg2 quotes
Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created. — Werner Heisenberg · 1958Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer... We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. — Werner Heisenberg · 1956Wernher von Braun2 quotes
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing. — Wernher von Braun · 1973Don'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 · 1958Albert, Prince Consort1 quote
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 · 1851Alfred Eisenstaedt1 quote
It's more important to click with people than to click the shutter. — Alfred Eisenstaedt · 1995August Heinrich Hoffman1 quote
Germany above all. — August Heinrich Hoffman · 1841Carl Schmitt1 quote
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