Karl Jaspers Quotes

It is in our incompleteness, of which we are aware, that education as a permanent process is grounded. Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Our own self-realization is the greatest service we can render the world.

the process of building a self and its works is always too slow. One is always in arrears to oneself.

Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die.

Those who follow the part of themselves which is great are great men; those who follow the part which is little are little men.

Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important, at the present moment, is that of the self-forming power treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the energy which the mind is created to exert on the material world.

At midlife, you're pregnant with the best self you can be - someone who has learned enough from both successes and failures to add up to a fine human being.

The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best that is in us. It is only through our own personal awakening that the world can be awakened. We cannot give what we do not have.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

Life is a great university for the unfolding of the mind, for developing character. In choosing our life work, when we are free to choose, we should remember this, and choose that which will call the biggest man or woman out of us and not that from which we can coin the most dollars.

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

My daughter's 19. I'm not asking her to develop as an artist. I'm just asking her to develop as a full person, human being.

Before you can do something you must first be something.

I prefer stories about people who are, in a sense, trying to find better versions of themselves.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Evolution happens in nature and in individuals. I want to participate actively in its happening within me.

I'm learning all the time. I'm evolving all the time as a human being. I'm getting better, I hope, in all of the important ways.

As a human being, I'm work in process.

Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.