Johann Georg Hamann Quotes

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Common sense is not so common.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

It can't be Nature, for it is not sense.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Common sense varies among the young, as among the old.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

A concept is stronger than a fact.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.

What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.