Karl Jaspers

“מטרה היא דרך בזמן.”

“אין להקריב לחזון העתיד את האדם ההווה.”

“האדם הוא גדול ממה שהוא יודע על עצמו.”

“The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.”

“Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.”

“Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.”

“Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.”

“Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.”

“As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.”

“The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.”

“Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.”

“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.”

“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.”

“At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.”