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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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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
State
Condition
Free
Likely
Universe
Remain
States
Responsible
Men
Reach
Conditions
Alone
Lowly
Stars
Stands

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Reason may not always tell us what to believe, but it can help us on what we shouldn't believe.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To an even moderately sophisticated and well-read person it should come as no surprise that any religion at all has its hidden as well as its obvious beauties and is capable of profound and impressive interpretations. What is deeply objectionable about most of these interpretations is that they allow the believer to say Yes while evading any No.
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Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life.
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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.
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Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
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Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
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Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.
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Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.
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To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic.
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Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life.
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The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.
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The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?
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It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow.
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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.
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No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.
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Writing is thinking in slow motion.
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