Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

A table is not blessed if it has fed no scholars.

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

To grow a philosopher's beard.

The greatest Clerkes be not the wisest men.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Were I not a king, I would be a university man.

The University conceives of itself as dedicated to the power of the intellect. Its commitment is to the way of reason.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.

Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

I feel friendship towards philosophers, but towards sophists, teachers of literature, or any other such kind of godforsaken people, I neither feel friendship now, nor may I ever do so in the future.

I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher.

Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.