Scientific reason, with its strict conscience, its lack of prejudice, and its determination to question every result again the moment it might lead to the least intellectual advantage, does in an area of secondary interest what we ought to be doing with the basic questions of life.

Robert Musil

Categorized in : Life Intellectual Determination

And what would you do, ... if you could rule the world for a day? I suppose I would have no choice but to abolish reality.

Robert Musil

choices reality world

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.

Robert Musil

army people world

... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.

Robert Musil

ocean bridges children

Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

Robert Musil

clothes stupidity hands

... we engage in politics because we don't know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our parties exist from a fear of theory. The voter fears that one idea can always be contradicted by another. Therefore the parties reciprocally defend themselves against the few old ideas they have inherited. They don't live from what they promise, but from frustrating the promises of others. This is their silent community of interests.

Robert Musil

community party ideas

One does what one is; one becomes what one does.

Robert Musil

doe

A politician who climbs high over the bodies of the slain is described as vile or great according to the degree of his success.

Robert Musil

degrees politician body

If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.

Robert Musil

possibility ifs reality

Mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.

Robert Musil

wicked earth men

The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mentall illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one.

Robert Musil

differences healthy facts

The thought is not something that observes an inner event, but, rather it is this inner event itself. We do not reflect on something, but, rather, something thinks itself in us.

Robert Musil

events thinking

One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.

Robert Musil

baseness conform age

True' and 'false' are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.

Robert Musil

true-and-false decision people

Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.

Robert Musil

progress would-be wonderful

... there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually.

Robert Musil

temptation numbers people

Life is to blame for everything.

Robert Musil

blame life-is

I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also be another, where all actions proceed from a very personal state of excitement. Where actions have meanings, not just causes. And where a person, to use a trivial word, is happy, and not just nervously tormenting himself.

Robert Musil

happiness life believe

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

Robert Musil

surface form skins

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

Robert Musil

layers art

It's not the genius who is 100 years ahead of his time but average man who is 100 years behind it.

Robert Musil

average men years