Karl Jaspers Quotes

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

This means that no single logic is strong enough to support the total construction of human knowledge.

The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities; the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Subjectivism is not an absolute principle; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sound methodology.

Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

It would be difficult to discover the truth about the universe if we refused to consider anything that might be true.

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge, and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal; society can not exist unless it goes on.

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

Philosophy wasn't about facts, it was about ideas. My first essay title was something like: 'How can you know what other people are thinking?' I thought, 'Wow, what an amazing thing.' I really thought deeply for the first time.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

To attempt this would be like seeing without eyes or directing the gaze of knowledge behind one's own eye. Modern science can acknowledge no other than this epistemological stand-point.

The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it.