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Karl Jaspers

Karl Jaspers Quotes

Psychiatrist

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Famous Karl Jaspers Quotes

“Thus those who are deluded into supposing that they possess being as such often endeavour to make man forget himself. Man is dissolved in fictions of being and yet these fictions themselves always conceal a possible road back to man; hidden dissatisfaction may lead to the recovery of the authentic seriousness which becomes real only in existential presence and casts off the ruinous attitude of those who take life as it is and do what they please.”

Aestheticism
Book:Way to Wisdom
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“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.”

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Book:Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity
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“An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.”

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Author:Karl Jaspers
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“The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: 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.”

WayMeanStillsPhilosophyAnswersWiseLoversEssentialsEssenceEndurePhilosopherPossessionGreekDistinctionDistinguishedSearch For Truth
Author:Karl Jaspers
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“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.”

PersonsMomentsIndividualViewsNumbersFictionOpinionGoneGroupsSpecialUpliftingNeverthelessMultitudesUnitsPublic OpinionPhantomsTransientIllusory
Author:Karl Jaspers
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“It has become obligatory to fulfil a function which shall in some way be regarded as useful to the masses...Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstition without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants.”

PeopleWayMayExistenceGreatnessMassFunctionIndependenceFlatsSuperstitionsTolerateStampsAntsInhumanConstrain
Author:Karl Jaspers
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