Quote

Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.

Walter Kaufmann

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Walter Kaufmann
Age: 59 †
Born: 1921
Born: July 1
Died: 1980
Died: September 4
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Freiburg/Breisgau
Walter Arnold Kaufmann
David Dennis
Case
Evidence
Presumptive
Cases
Acclaim
Virtue
Originality
Success
Quick
Book
Substance
Proof
Lack

More quotes by Walter Kaufmann

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Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.
Walter Kaufmann
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Job's forthright indictment of the injustice of this world is surely right. The ways of the world are weird and much more unpredictable than either scientists or theologians generally make things look.
Walter Kaufmann
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Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life.
Walter Kaufmann
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Philosophy means liberation from the - routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish to fly.
Walter Kaufmann
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Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
Walter Kaufmann
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Thirdly, even if we assume that the world is governed by purpose, we need only add that this purpose - or, if there are several, at least one of them - is not especially intent on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering or actually rejoices in it.
Walter Kaufmann
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For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.
Walter Kaufmann
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Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.
Walter Kaufmann
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Reason may not always tell us what to believe, but it can help us on what we shouldn't believe.
Walter Kaufmann
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There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.
Walter Kaufmann
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The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.
Walter Kaufmann
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When Hegel later became a man of influence' he insisted that the Jews should be granted equal rights because civic rights belong to man because he is a man and not on account of his ethnic origins or his religion.
Walter Kaufmann
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The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.
Walter Kaufmann
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No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.
Walter Kaufmann
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It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above that life and suffering must come neatly labeled that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose.
Walter Kaufmann
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Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire…. ….The world winks at dishonesty. the world does not call it dishonesty
Walter Kaufmann
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The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.
Walter Kaufmann
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The Greeks had considered hope the final evil in Pandora's box. They also gave us an image of perfect nobility: a human being lovingly doing her duty to another human being despite all threats, and going to her death with pride and courage, not deterred by any hope - Antigone.
Walter Kaufmann
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The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life-that is the heart of existentialism.
Walter Kaufmann
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Those who believe in God because their experience of life and the facts of nature prove his existence must have led sheltered lives and closed their hearts to the voice of their brothers' blood.
Walter Kaufmann