Karl Jaspers Quotes

Quotes about:

• the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

  Karl Jaspers

  Philosophy, Answers, Way

  "Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy". Book by Karl Jaspers, 1951.

  58 Copy quote

• Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.

  Karl Jaspers

  Men, Possibility, Process

  Karl Jaspers (2014). “Man in the Modern Age (Routledge Revivals)”, p.146, Routledge

  54 Copy quote

• The moment is the sole reality.

  Karl Jaspers

  Inspirational, Reality, Cherish Every Moment

  74 Copy quote

• What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.

  Karl Jaspers

  Fear, Faces, Emptiness

  50 Copy quote

• We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.

  Karl Jaspers

  Differences, Accepting, Extraordinary

  Karl Jaspers (2009). “The Question of German Guilt”, p.5, Fordham Univ Press

  33 Copy quote

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

  Karl Jaspers

  Exercise, Moments

  29 Copy quote

• All democracies demand common public education because nothing makes people so much alike as the same education.

  Karl Jaspers

  People, Democracy, Demand

  Karl Jaspers (1965). “The idea of the university”

  8 Copy quote

• A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific.

  Karl Jaspers

  Mean, Knowing, Approach

  23 Copy quote

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

  Karl Jaspers

  Communication, Mean, Purpose

  "Man in the Modern Age". Book by Karl Jaspers, 1933.

  9 Copy quote

• An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.

  Karl Jaspers

  Self, Ideas, Deception

  16 Copy quote

• The soul of a landscape, the spirits of the elements, the genius of every place will be revealed to a loving view of nature.

  Karl Jaspers

  Views, Soul, Genius

  18 Copy quote

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

  Karl Jaspers

  Thinking, Self, Accomplishment

  11 Copy quote

• Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought

  Karl Jaspers

  Space, Secret, Quiet

  Karl Jaspers (1952). “Reason and Anti-reason in Our Time”

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  Karl Jaspers

  Loss, Men, Cry

  Karl Jaspers (2014). “Man in the Modern Age (Routledge Revivals)”, p.91, Routledge

  33 Copy quote

• The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units. Such an opinion is spoken of as 'public opinion,' a fiction which is appealed to by individuals and by groups as supporting their special views. It is impalpable, illusory, transient; "'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gone"; a nullity which can nevertheless for a moment endow the multitude with power to uplift or destroy.

  Karl Jaspers

  Uplifting, Views, Numbers

  "Man in the Modern Age". Book by Karl Jaspers, 1933.

  37 Copy quote

• Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

  Karl Jaspers

  Men, Philosopher, Individual

  8 Copy quote

• The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.

  Karl Jaspers

  Teacher, Intimate Relationships, Students

  Karl Jaspers (1965). “The idea of the university”

  7 Copy quote

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

  Karl Jaspers

  Character, Greatness, Mind

  55 Copy quote

• The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

  Karl Jaspers

  Wise, Philosophy, Mean

  "Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy". Book by Karl Jaspers, 1951.

  16 Copy quote

• Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility.

  Karl Jaspers

  Demand, World, Existential

  Karl Jaspers (1997). “Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity”, p.60, JHU Press

  13 Copy quote

• The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

  Karl Jaspers

  Past, Glowing, Language

  "Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre". Book by Larry Walter Kaufmann, 1956.

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Karl Jaspers

  Reality, Men, Understanding

  16 Copy quote

• What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts.

  Karl Jaspers

  Meaningful, Understanding, Movement

  Karl Jaspers (1964). “General psychopathology”

  13 Copy quote

• When in our isolation we see our lives seeping away as a mere succession of moments, tossed meaninglessly about by accidents and overwhelming events; when we contemplate a history that seems to be at an end, leaving only chaos behind it, then we are impelled to raise ourselves above history.

  Karl Jaspers

  Leaving, Events, Chaos

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• I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.

  Karl Jaspers

  Reality, Past, Littles

  18 Copy quote

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