Quotes by German Authors - Page 74

Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered.
Ernst Jünger
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.
Karl Marx
What matters for the dialectician is having the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means: to set the sails. It is the way they are set that matters. Words are his sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts.
Walter Benjamin
The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.
Walter Benjamin
Some men are born posthumously.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.In this way arose feudal Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
Karl Marx
Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.
Walter Benjamin
The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.
Edith Hamilton
Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
Hannah Arendt
The historian is a prophet looking backwards.
Friedrich Schlegel
There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin
Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.
Karl Marx
Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
Hannah Arendt
People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent.
Hugo Hamilton
History is written by the victors.
Walter Benjamin
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
Karl Marx
The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.
Ernst Jünger
In history, as elsewhere, fools rush in, and the angels may perhaps be forgiven if rather than tread in those treacherous paths they tread upon the fools instead.
G.R. Elton
Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered.
Ernst Jünger
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.
Karl Marx
What matters for the dialectician is having the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means: to set the sails. It is the way they are set that matters. Words are his sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts.
Walter Benjamin
The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.
Walter Benjamin
Some men are born posthumously.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.In this way arose feudal Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
Karl Marx
Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.
Walter Benjamin
The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.
Edith Hamilton
Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
Hannah Arendt
The historian is a prophet looking backwards.
Friedrich Schlegel
There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin
Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.
Karl Marx
Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
Hannah Arendt
People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent.
Hugo Hamilton
History is written by the victors.
Walter Benjamin
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
Karl Marx
That the Negroes were enslaved more than other races, and on a large scale, is evidently a result of their being, in contrast to other races, inferior in intelligence - which, however, does not justify such slavery
Arthur Schopenhauer
In our day everyone wants to appear intelligent, one would prefer to be accused of crime than of naiveté if the accompanying risks could be avoided. But since intelligence cannot be drawn from the void, subterfuge are resorted to, one of the most prevalent being the mania for "demystification", which allows an air of intelligence to be conveyed at small cost, for all one need do is assert that the normal response to a particular phenomenon is "prejudiced" and that it is high time it was cleared of the "legends" surrounding it; if the ocean could be made out to be a pond or the Himalayas a hill, it would be done. Certain writers find it impossible to be content with taking note of the fact that a particular thing or person has a particular character or destiny, as everyone had done before them; they must always begin by remarking that "it has too often been said", and go on to declare that the reality is something quite different and has at last been discovered, and that up till now all the world has been "living a lie". This strategy is applied above all to things that are evident and universally known, it would doubtless be too naive to acknowledge in so many words that a lion is a carnivore and that he is not quite safe to meet.
Frithjof Schuon
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence
Albert Einstein
The declining of responsibility for the self can also be hidden behind a pseudo-objectivity. A patient may make astute observations about himself and give a fairly accurate report of what he dislikes in himself. On the surface it seems as though he is perceptive and honest about himself. But "he" may be merely the intelligent observer of a fellow who is inhibited, fearful, or arrogantly demanding. Hence, since he is not responsible for the fellow he observes, the hurt to his pride is cushioned—all the moreso because the flashlight of his pride is focused on his faculty for keen observations.
Karen Horney
A critical attitude, like activity, is one of the fundamental characteristics of our time. Both are interdependent. If the critical attitude should dwindle, there would be more peace and less intelligence, to the benefit of the essential. Neither criticism nor activity, however, can steer the course in such a direction - this means that higher forces are involved.
Ernst Jünger
Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.
Albert Einstein
Every true genius is bound to be naive.
Friedrich Schiller
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
Johannes Kepler
I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Liberation from ego is what we shramanas are seeking, O Exalted One. If I were your disciple, O Venerable One, I'm afraid it might befall me that my ego would be pacified and liberated only seemingly, only illusorily, that in reality it would survive and grow great, for then I would make the teaching, my discipleship, my love for you, and the community of the monks into my ego!
Hermann Hesse
There is an underlying unity in all things
Arthur Schopenhauer
. . . nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings!
Hermann Hesse
The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.
Eckhart Tolle
Reading makes you impudent. Oh yes, unknown father, so it does.
Nina George
Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle
When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.
Charles Bukowski
at home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.
Lisel Mueller
Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page—rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words—just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are—accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows.
Friedrich Nietzsche
His reading aloud was constantly improving, and histories were more like radio plays. Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with an accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe.
Nina George
[A]t bottom it is the same with traveling as with reading. How often do we complain that we cannot remember one thousandth part of what we read! In both cases, however, we may console ourselves with the reflection that the things we see and read make an impression on the mind before they are forgotten, and so contribute to its formation and nurture…
Arthur Schopenhauer
This consists in not taking a book into one’s hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time — such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind
Arthur Schopenhauer
I always used to read aloud to her in the evenings--
Cornelia Funke