Karl Jaspers Quotes

Now all the myths that you have heard and that resonate with you, those are the elements from round about that you are building into a form in your life. The thing worth considering is how they relate to each other in your context, not how they relate to something out there-how they were relevant on the North American prairies or in the Asian jungles hundreds of years agon, but how they are relevant now-unless by contemplating their former meaning you can begin to amplify your own understanding of the role they play in your life.

I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world.

When someone drew a picture of Pope John wearing an Avis 'We try harder' button, those words no longer meant which car rental to patronize, and yet some of the overtones from its original meaning are there and make a contribution to the new situation.

Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.

If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food.

Any journey in life, if not done for human reasons of understanding and love, would be a very empty and lonely one.

As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly significant.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.

Any of the yoga poses could be substituted in this analogy. How you practice is much more meaningful than what yoga moves you can or cannot do.

Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.

Meaningful truths are never newly discovered; they're just uncovered anew.

Ignorance is not something that lends itself to a meaningful discussion.

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance.

Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others.

We are all students of the world; frail embodied consciousnesses struggling to understand, and be a meaningful part of this great, mysterious gift of life.

Every interpretation is but an introduction to another interpretation, and that is how Talmud pages are printed.

I often reflect on what an extraordinary time (pun intended) it is to be alive here in the beginning of the twenty-first century. It took life billions of years to get to this point. It took humans thousands of years to piece together a meaningful understanding of our cosmos, our planet and ourselves. Think how fortunate we are to know this much. But think also of all that's yet to be discovered. Here's hoping the deep answers to the deep questions-from the nature of consciousness to the origin of life-will be found in not too much more time.

Take it in what sense thou wilt.

The facts never speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted in terms of some understanding of where they come from and what the relation between them is.

Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease.