Otto Weininger Quotes
-
A man is himself important precisely in proportion that all things seem important to him.
-
The fixed stars signify the angel in man. That is why man orients himself by them; and that is why women have no appreciation for the starry sky; because they have no sense of the angel in man.
-
All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.
-
Every true, eternal problem is an equally true, eternal fault; every answer an atonement, every realisation an improvement.
-
The deepest, the intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad.
-
The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius.
-
Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared.
-
Fate determines many things, no matter how we struggle.
-
The logical axioms are the principle of all truth. These posit an existence towards which all cognition serves. Logic is a law which must be obeyed, and man realises himself only in so far as he is logical. He finds himself in cognition. All error must be felt to be crime. And so man must not err. He must find the truth.
-
Logik und Ethik aber sind im Grunde nur eines und das-selbe. - Pflicht gegen sich selbst. Sie feiern ihre Vereinigung im höchsten Werte der Wahrheit...
-
No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.
-
Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.
-
Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all.
-
In order to depict a man one must understand him, and to understand him one must be like him; in order to portray his psychological activities one must be able to reproduce them in oneself. To understand a man one must have his nature in oneself.
-
Memory, then, is a necessary part of the logical faculty. … The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be A
-
Psychologism is the most comfortable conception of life, because according to it there are no longer any more problems. That is why it also condemns all solutions from the outset, since it acknowledges the actual problems as little as the idea of truth.
-
In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension.
-
That is why man can also never understand himself: For he is himself a timeless act; an act which he performs continuously, and there is no moment in which he might not perform it, as there would have to be to understand himself.
-
Man must act in such a way that the whole of his individuality lies in each moment.
-
The highest expression of all morality is: Be!
-
The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, … deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action.
-
Es gibt Männer, die imstande sind, eine Frau, die sie in keiner Weise anzieht, zu heiraten-bloß weil sie den anderen gefällt. Und solche Ehen gibt es auch zwischen so manchen Menschen und ihren Gedanken.
-
Kein Mensch kann sich selbst je verstehen, denn dazu müßte er aus sich selbst herausgehen, dazu müßte das Subjekt des Erkennens und Wollens Objekt werden können: ganz wie, um das Universum zu verstehen, ein Standpunkt noch außerhalb des Universums erforderlich wäre.
-
To understand a man is really to be that man.