“Very often inertia, selfishness, and vanity play the greatest role in our trust in others; inertia when we prefer to trust somebody else, in order not to investigate, be vigilant, or act ourselves; selfishness when the desire to speak about our own affairs tempts us to confide in someone else; vanity when it concers something that we are proud of.”

German philosopher and writer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher and writer. Active in the 19th century, he is often called the “Philosopher of Pessimism.” He is best known for his 1818 book The World as Will and Representation. In that work, Schopenhauer presents the visible world as a expression of a blind, irrational will beneath appearances. He built his philosophy on Kant’s transcendental idealism, then shaped it into an atheistic system of metaphysics and ethics that stood against the German idealism of his time.