"For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy."

Arthur Schopenhauer Philosophy See all quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer →

React to this quote

More by Arthur Schopenhauer

“And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition! It is the most profitable and elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death.”

“The New Testament, on the other hand, 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.”

“This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be.”

“And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition ! It is the most profitable and elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death.”

“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.”

“In an essay on ‘“The Christian System,” he argued that the visions of the Old and New Testament are so unalike that the latter “‘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.””

Resonant Thoughts

"The regime plays on the nationalistic argument of Iran’s sovereign right to the technology. They need to be reminded that Iran had that right before they came to power. As a matter a fact, it is their…"

— Reza Pahlavi

Politics1960–1980

#philosophy

"Only through intuition does a work rise above more or less subjective expression. Different periods produce different feelings and conceptions, and in each period men differ. Consequently different ar…"

— Piet Mondrian

Art1872–1944

#philosophy

"What then was the commencement of the whole matter ? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably…"

— Sri Aurobindo

Politics1872–1950

#philosophy

"There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of "aristocrats of the spirit," reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite te…"

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy1844–1900

#philosophy