Quotes About Philosophy

Certainly my work is negative, destructive; but … only in relation to the unhuman, not to the human[.]

T]he object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively.

L]et it be remembered that atheism … is the secret of religion … ; religion … in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

Each planet has its own sun. … [I]t really is another sun on Uranus … The relation of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the same time a relation of the Earth to itself, or to its own nature … Hence each planet has in its sun the mirror of its own nature.

In the object which he contemplates … man becomes acquainted with himself.

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.

You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

This is how philosophers should salute each other: 'Take your time.

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

If there were a verb meaning to believe falsely, it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.