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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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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
Something
Triumph
Endure
Defeat
Defeats
Fashion
Heretic
Suffering
Triumphs
Faith
Compatible
Without
Relish
Trying
Resentment

More quotes by 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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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
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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.
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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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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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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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The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering.
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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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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Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
Walter Kaufmann
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It was also Hegel who established the view that the different philosophic systems that we find in history are to be comprehended in terms of development and that they are generally one-sided because they owe their origins to a reaction against what has gone before.
Walter Kaufmann
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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.
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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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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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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Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life.
Walter Kaufmann
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The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.
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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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