Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes on Knowledge
Arthur Schopenhauer was a 19th-century German philosopher best known for his metaphysical pessimism and his theory of the world as will and representation. This page collects quotes attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehn vermögen... | Vol. II, Ch. III, para. 31 (On Genius), 1844 | As cited in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy: Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 137 -
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
Psychological Observations -
“The world is my representation.”
From The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999 -
“Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815) [ citation needed ]”
It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher . He must be like Sophocles ' Oedipus , who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sa -
“Obit anus, abit onus.”
The old woman dies, the burden is lifted. Statement Schopenhauer wrote in Latin into his account book, after the death of a seamstress to whom he had made court-ordered payments of 15 thalers a quarter for over twenty years, after she had accused him of having injured her arm; as quoted in Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann (1877) by Francis Bowen , p. 392. Schopenhauer -
“quoted in The Circle of Memory_ An Autobiography - Subhash Kak”
The New Testament … must be in some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian. It is its morality which places it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagonism to the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is the only possible point of connection between the two. -
“As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624”
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.