“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some politi...”
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Author detail
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, *On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason*, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world. Schopenhauer's most influential work, *The World as Will and Representation*, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, Buddhism, and Vedanta.
Quotes
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“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some politi...”
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“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
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“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong...”
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“Immediate reality is conditional upon individual consciousness. Thus the individual real existence of man also lies first and foremost in his consciousness. But this is as such necessarily i...”
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“[...] it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it. [...]”
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“In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.”
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“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of grea...”
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“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
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“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much s...”
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“The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.”
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“Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.”
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“A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the mor...”
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“Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.”
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“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.”
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“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
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“To live alone is the fate of all great souls.”
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“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by precon...”
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“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
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“Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.”
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“A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thou...”
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