“If I meet other people and criticize their weaknesses, I rob myself of higher cognitive power. But if I try to enter deeply and lovingly into another person's good qualities, I gather in that force.”

Austrian philosopher and esotericist

Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He became known at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic, and later for founding anthroposophy, an esoteric spiritual movement rooted in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. He also wrote works including The Philosophy of Freedom. His teachings drew on Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism, and he was described as a claimed clairvoyant who said he could speak with the dead. Many of his ideas are regarded as pseudoscientific, and he was also associated with pseudohistory.