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Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.

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
World
Signify
Refusal
Accept
Accepting
Words
Language
Writing
Men

More quotes by 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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Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
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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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.
Walter Kaufmann
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Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life.
Walter Kaufmann
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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.
Walter Kaufmann
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The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepen his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?
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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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.
Walter Kaufmann
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Writing is thinking in slow motion.
Walter Kaufmann