Karl Jaspers Quotes

I knew I had a lot to say. Not politically - politics have always confused me - but perhaps spiritually.

Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

I think we're all very curious about our own minds, but we just may not have the tools to channel that.

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

I try not to be overly analytical.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Wisdom comes from within. Knowledge is acquired and can sometimes put a screen on your wisdom.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

I possess a strong sense of reason.

If some things don't make you lose your sense of reason, then you have none to lose.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

I'm still a firm believer that we were definitely put here to use our minds, and that is what makes us different. And that that's the key. If there is anything that is going to stop mankind from being such a beastly, destructive creature, it is reason.

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.

The only hope I can see for the future depends on a wiser and braver use of the reason, not a panic flight from it.

I cannot abide stupidity, in myself or in others.

As far as I remember, even younger than eight, I have always been guided by reason. Not cold reason, but that which leads to the truth, to the real, and to sane Justice.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

Every man should be the intellectual proprietor of himself, honest with himself, and intellectually hospitable; and upon every brain, reason should be enthroned as king.