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 More Quotes by Karl Jaspers More Quotes From Karl Jaspers The moment is the sole reality. Karl Jaspers cherish-every-moment inspirational reality 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 possibility process men 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 answers philosophy way What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled. Karl Jaspers emptiness fear faces 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 We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences. Karl Jaspers extraordinary differences accepting 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 cry loss men 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 movement understanding meaningful Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself. Karl Jaspers moments exercise 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 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 understanding men reality 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 genius soul views Greatness of mind becomes an object of love only when the power at work in it itself has a noble character Karl Jaspers greatness mind character On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes. Karl Jaspers science lying knowledge A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific. Karl Jaspers approach knowing mean Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul. Karl Jaspers motherhood philosophy mean The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me. Karl Jaspers study law fiction Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work. Karl Jaspers made birthday philosophy 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. Karl Jaspers desert limits path 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. Karl Jaspers unity depth may
