Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

Everyone thinks because it is solely responsible for the wisdom or folly of his life, that is to say of his destiny.

I am smart because I know I nothing.

Man creates culture and through culture creates himself.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

I’m not confused, I’m just well mixed.

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason

Sleeping is no mean art. For its sake one must stay awake all day.

Every Profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.

One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life.

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and ‘free spirit’ and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse.

Civilization and Its Discontents.

A deaf and dumb person who sees two men in conversation may nevertheless understand from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, how well their discussion is getting along.

The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.

Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.

Your brain is much better than you think; just use it!

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.

A person with a mind is bound to be filled with conceptions. These conceptions prevent him from knowing things directly, so a person with a mind shall never really know.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

We are all ignorant; just about different things.