Arthur Schopenhauer was an atheist and pessimist ... He was born in 1788 and his thoughts left no one indifferent. Despite the fact that he passed away in 1860, his thoughts are still quite present today in the minds of many people. He was a German-language philosopher and thinker in the XNUMXth century. His best known work is "The world as will and representation."
He was an excellent student, his philosophy has to do with Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc. His philosophy was very elaborate for the century in which it was found and had a certain evolution towards metaphysics that later influenced writers such as Borges, Unamuno or Beckett. It was even inspiring to such important scientists as Albert Einstein. In 1809 he began his medical career at the University of Göttingen, but when he met the philosophy professor Gottlob Schulze he realized that he had to turn his life around and he began to be interested in and study Plato, Kant, Spinoza or Aristotle.
He was a great reader and presented his thesis 'Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde' ('On the quadruple root of the principle of sufficient reason') in 1813, obtaining the appointment of Doctor by the University of Jena. He got a balance at the University of Berlin but his disagreements with Hegel and their confrontations labeled him his philosophy as 'anti-Hegelian'.
He had a pessimistic thinking about human beings, but his literature reflects a point of reflection that in reality, although pessimistic, makes us reach an optimistic end. In this sense, his words have an undertone that leaves no one indifferent. Unfortunately his philosophy was not very successful while he was alive, although posthumously it impacted many disciplines.
Arthur Schopenhauer quotes
Next we are going to tell you some of his best phrases so that you can better understand his philosophy and his thoughts in case you do not know him or do not know, until today, who he is and what he contributed to humanity no less than Arthur Schopenhauer.
- Each game is an anticipation of death and each encounter an anticipation of resurrection.
- It is difficult to find happiness within yourself, but it is impossible to find it elsewhere.
- Most men are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and they are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.
- Fate is the one who shuffles the cards, but we who play them.
- Loneliness is the lot of all excellent spirits.
- Religions, like fireflies, need darkness to shine.
- There is no favorable wind for those who do not know which port they are going to.
- We rarely think about what we have, but we always think about what we lack.
- Common men only think about how to pass the time. An intelligent man tries to take advantage of it.
- It is said that evil is expiated in that world; but the stupidity is expiated in this.
- The greatest of follies is sacrificing health for any other kind of happiness.
- Only change is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
- Almost all of our pain arises from our relationships with other people.
- Happiness consists in the frequent repetition of pleasure.
- It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
- The young person must, early on, be able to bear being alone; as it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.
- My body and my will are one.
- He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
- Each person takes the limits of his own field of vision as the limits of the world.
- The more vulgar and ignorant man is, the less enigmatic the world seems to him; Everything that exists and as it exists seems to him to be self-explanatory, because his intelligence has not yet exceeded the primitive mission of serving the will as a mediator of motives.
- The surest way to avoid becoming very unhappy is by not pretending to be very happy.
- You have to think like the minority and speak like the majority.
- Commiseration with animals is intimately linked with goodness of character; in such a way that it can be affirmed, for sure, that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good person.
- You can only be totally yourself while you are alone: who, therefore, does not love solitude, does not love freedom either; for only if you are alone you are free.
- Health so prevails over all external goods that a healthy beggar is likely to be happier than a sick king.
- What people commonly call destiny is, as a rule, nothing more than their own stupid and foolish behavior.
- Feeling envy is human, but tasting the evil of others is evil.
- All truth goes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently rejected. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
- Genius and madness have something in common: they both live in a world that is different from the one that exists for everyone else.
- Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are enemies by nature.
- If a man wants to read good books, he must avoid bad ones; because life is short, and time and energy limited.
- Talent achieves a goal that no one else can; the genie reaches a goal that no one else can see.
- Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence there is a greater capacity for pain, and only with the highest degree of intelligence does suffering reach its highest point.
- If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bolder and more confident, lies more forcefully, and is unmasked.
- The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the actual project.
- Every day is a little life: every awakening and arising is a little birth, every fresh morning is a little youth, every rest and dream a little death.
