Quotes from Karl Jaspers

Reason is the inextinguishable impulse to philosophize with whose destruction reason itself is destroyed.

Existenz only becomes clear through reason; reason only has content through Existenz.

There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty.

To philosophize is to learn to die – philosophizing is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being. "Philosophy and Science", World Review Magazine (March 1950).

There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.

Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

Greatness of mind becomes an object of love only when the power at work in it itself has a noble character

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.

I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.

When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself.

Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself.