Quotes by Swiss Authors - Page 27

I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.
Alain de Botton
To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The gods have become our diseases.
C.G. Jung
In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who says there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University, page 214)
Albert Einstein
I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
Albert Einstein
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
Albert Einstein
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein
The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.
Albert Einstein
Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.
Johann Georg Zimmermann
Сè противречи едно на друго, сè протрчува едно крај друго, никаде нема сигурност. Сè може да се толкува вака, и сè може да се толкува обратно. Сета човечка историја може да се протолкува како развој и напредок, а истовремено без да се види нешто повеќе од пропаст и глупост. Зар нема вистина? Зар не постои вистинска и валидна наука?
Hermann Hesse
Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A joke is a good camouflage. Next best comes sentiment... But the best camouflage of all - in my opinion - is the plain and simple truth. Because nobody ever believes it.
Max Frisch
Both the thoughts and the senses were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them... from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived.
Hermann Hesse
The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?
Hermann Hesse
The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
Alain de Botton
One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.
Alain de Botton
There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
Hermann Hesse
Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish...It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery.
Hermann Hesse
I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.
Albert Einstein
The truth brings no man a fortune.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.
Alain de Botton
Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.
Alice MIller
A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.
Hermann Hesse
If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything is tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?" Joseph Knect said to his Music Master "there is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend rather, you should long for perfection in yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived not taught
Hermann Hesse
That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.
Robert Walser
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
Albert Einstein
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.
Albert Einstein
I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.
Hermann Hesse
Cada época, cada cultura, cada costume e tradição tem seu próprio estilo, tem sua delicadeza e sua severidade, suas belezas e crueldades, aceitam certos sofrimentos como naturais, sofrem pacientemente certas desgraças. O verdadeiro sofrimento, o verdadeiro inferno da vida humana reside ali onde se chocam duas culturas ou duas religiões. Um homem da antiguidade, que tivesse de viver na Idade Média, haveria de sentir-se tão afogado quanto um selvagem se sentiria em nossa civilização. Há momentos em que toda uma geração cai entre dois estilos de vida, e toda evidência, toda moral, toda salvação e inocência ficam perdidos para ela. Naturalmente isso não nos atinge da mesma maneira.
Hermann Hesse
Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability.
Alain de Botton
The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
Alain de Botton
É muito mais lisonjeiro,(...)lutar-se por alguma coisa bela e ideal e saber ao mesmo tempo que não se conseguirá alcançá-la. Os ideais serão algo que se possa alcançar? Viveremos para cabar com a morte? Não, viveremos para temê-la e também para amá-la, e precisamente por causa da morte é que nossa vida vez por outra resplandece tão radiosa num belo instante.
Hermann Hesse
I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.
Albert Einstein
I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.
Alain de Botton
The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second
Jean-Luc Godard
The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: "Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph.
Hermann Hesse
Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the three other pillars.
Paracelsus
Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?”The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.
Hermann Hesse
If tomorrow were never to come, it would not be worth living today.
Albert Einstein
O how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all, but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning . . . or wise . . . and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening.
Hermann Hesse
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
Albert Einstein
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
Alain de Botton
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Albert Einstein
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Albert Einstein
Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots
Albert Einstein
In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.
Hermann Hesse
Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam?Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.
Albert Einstein
I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking
Albert Einstein
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Albert Einstein
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein