Karl Jaspers quotes - page 3

Karl Jaspers was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who played a significant role in the development of existential philosophy. His work bridged the disciplines of psychiatry and philosophy, focusing on themes such as human freedom and the limits of knowledge. He made a lasting impact on modern thought through his writings and ideas about existence and transcendence. Here are 65 of his quotes:

Philosophy seemed to me the supreme, even the sole, concern of man.

Karl Jaspers

The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth.

Karl Jaspers

I approach the presentation of Kierkegaard with some trepidation. Next to Nietzsche, or rather, prior to Nietzsche, I consider him to be the most important thinker of our post-Kantian age.

Karl Jaspers

We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience.

Karl Jaspers

Imminent seems the collapse of that which for millennium has constituted man's universe.

Karl Jaspers

It is impalpable, illusory, transient; "'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gone"; a nullity which can nevertheless for a moment endow the multitude with power to uplift or destroy.

Karl Jaspers

My path was not the normal one of professors of philosophy.

Karl Jaspers

The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units.

Karl Jaspers

It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants.

Karl Jaspers

On the other hand, it may arise by the working of a fate to us still inscrutable which, out of ruin, will disclose a way towards the development of a new human being. To will the discovery of this way would be blind impotence, but those who do not wish to deceive themselves will be prepared for the possibility.

Karl Jaspers

Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves.

Karl Jaspers

The masses are our masters; and for every one who looks facts in the face his existence has become dependent on them, so that the thought of them must control his doings, his cares, and his duties.

Karl Jaspers

The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

Karl Jaspers