Quotes from Johann Georg Hamann

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies.

The thirst for vengeance was the beautiful nature which Homer imitated

Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word.

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home?

The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece.

All human wisdom works and has worries and grief as reward.

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.

I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter.

Do nothing or everything; the mediocre, the moderate, is repellent to me; I prefer an extreme.

Poetry is mother-tongue of the human race; as gardening is older than agriculture; painting than writing; song than declamation; parables,—than deductions; barter,—than trade.

While we are aiming at clear ideas, the food gets cold and tasteless.

What is this reason, with its universality, infallibility, exuberant certainty and obviousness? An ens rationis, a stuffed dummy which the howling superstition of our unreason endows with divine attributes.

Do either nothing or everything; the mediocre, the moderate, is repellent to me: I prefer an extreme.

Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race, as the garden is older than the ploughed field; painting, than writing; song, than declamation; parables, than logical deduction; barter, than commerce. A deeper sleep was the repose of our most distant ancestors, and their movement was a frenzied dance. Seven days they would sit in the silence of thought or wonder; -- and would open their mouths -- to winged sentences.

Everything that man in the beginning heard, saw with his eyes, contemplated, and felt with his hands, was a living word. For God was the Word. With this Word in his mouth and in his heart, the origin of language was as natural, as near and easy, as child's play.

I look upon the finest logical demonstration the way a sensible girl regards a love letter.

If sensibility and understanding as the two branches of human knowledge spring from one common root, to what end such a violent, unauthorized and willful separation of that which nature has joined together! Will not both branches wither away and die through a dichotomy and division of their common root?

Finally it is, by the way, obvious that if mathematics can arrogate to itself the privilege of the nobility because of its universal and necessary reliability, then even human reason itself would be inferior to the unfailing and infallible instinct of insects.

The purity of a language dispossesses it of its wealth; a correctness that is all too rigid takes away its strengh and manhood. In a city as big as Paris, forty learned men are procured each year, at no expense, who infalliably know what is pure and polite in their mother tongue and what is neccessary for the monopoly of this junkshop.

What one believes does not, therefore, have to be proved, and a proposition can be ever so incontrovertibly proven without on that account being believed.

Faith is not the work of reason, and therefore cannot succumb to its attack, because faith arises just as little from reason as tasting and seeing do.

Whoever writes in a foreign language must like a lover accommodate his mode of thinking to it. -- Whoever writes in his native language has the authority of a husband in his own house, if he is in command of it.

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race; just as gardening is older than the cultivated field; painting than writing; song than declamation; parables than syllogisms; barter than trade