For any community and those living in it, only that is true which can be communicated to all. 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.”, “To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.”, “Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.”, “Every truth that we may think complete will prove itself untruth at the moment of shipwreck.”, “We must all continuously recapture ourselves from indecision.”, “Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.”, “Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.”, “Nietzsche’s ideas and plans: for example, the idea of giving up the whole wretched academic world to form a secular monastic community.”, “Schumpeter remarked how pleased he was with the Russian Revolution. Her many books and articles have had a lasting influence on political theory and philosophy. 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. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible. — Karl Jaspers, A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. The soul of a landscape, the spirits of the elements, the genius of every place will be revealed to a loving view of nature. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls. Such thought is the reality of man’s being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.”, “The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. But there still remains open the possibility of a new war which, more dreadful than any that have preceded it would make an end of contemporary Europeans. — Karl Jaspers, With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition. We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences. Socialism was now no longer a discussion on paper, but had to prove its viability. — Karl Jaspers, Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work. Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension. Hence the winners snub all those who aim at adequate self-expression, speaking of them as pretentious, eccentric, biased, unpractical, and measuring their achievements by insincere standards. It battles against mediocrity which never takes stock of itself and which confuses knowledge with the mere learning of facts and <> The only satisfaction which man derives from a radical commitment to knowledge is the hope of advancing the frontier of knowledge to a point beyond which he cannot advance except by transcending knowledge itself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.