Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.

I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.

If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.

My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.

I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.

Conflicts may be the sources of defeat lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far reaching unities which flourish in the tensions that engender them

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

I am neither a child, a young man, nor an ancient; nor am I of any caste.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

I always looked for a man to rescue me and bring me happiness. I bought into that myth, of course, and looked for my own Prince Charming.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

A man must be strong in that profession, he must have vigor of body and mind, yet I am all out of breath if I walk up a hill; I have not the heart to crush even a fly.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

I believe that if a man does a job as well as a woman, he should be paid as much.

For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.

There is always a type of man who says he loves his fellow men, and expects to make a living at it.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

If a man is dumb, someone is going to get the best of him, so why not you? If you don't, you're as dumb as he is.

Happy the man who has been able to learn the causes of things.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

Sex is the most beautiful thing that can take place between a happily married man and his secretary.

Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

I think I had a more European outlook about the body and sex. The body is in no way dirty, and sex is something beautiful to give to and share with a lover. It has nothing to do with promiscuity, because I only believe in being in love with one man at a time.