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Top Walter Kaufmann Quotes

Browse top 32 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Walter Kaufmann.

Favorite Walter Kaufmann Quotes

1. "Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality." ~ Walter Kaufmann
2. "Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium. Few things about the strategy of contemporary apologists are more repellent than their frequent recourse to spurious alternatives. The lesser lights inform us that the alternative to Christianity is materialism, thus showing how little they have read, while the greater lights talk as if the alternative were bound to be a shallow and inane optimism. I don't believe that man will turn this earth into a bed of roses either with the aid of God or without it. Nor does life among the roses strike me as a dream from which one would not care to wake up after a very short time." ~ Walter Kaufmann
3. "To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic." ~ Walter Kaufmann
4. "The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah." ~ Walter Kaufmann
5. "Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it." ~ Walter Kaufmann
6. "Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person." ~ Walter Kaufmann
7. "It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow." ~ Walter Kaufmann
8. "Job's forthright indictment of the injustice of this world is surely right. The ways of the world are weird and much more unpredictable than either scientists or theologians generally make things look." ~ Walter Kaufmann
9. "The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepens his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains." ~ Walter Kaufmann
10. "Since the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart, and a host of others have shown that this religious dimension can be experienced and communicated apart from any religious context. But that is no reason for closing my heart to Job's cry, or to Jeremiah's, or to the Second Isaiah. I do not read them as mere literature; rather, I read Sophocles and Shakespeare with all my being, too." ~ Walter Kaufmann
11. "Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community." ~ Walter Kaufmann
12. "Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars." ~ Walter Kaufmann
13. "Let people who do not know what to do with themselves in this life, but fritter away their time reading magazines and watching television, hope for eternal life.....The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worth while and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die." ~ Walter Kaufmann
14. "Man's world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold. What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them. They like to be told that there are two worlds and two ways. This is comforting because it is so tidy. Almost always one way turns out to be common and the other is celebrated as superior.Those who tell of two ways and praise one are recognised as prophets or great teachers. They save men from confusion and hard choices. They offer a single choice that is easy to make because those who do not take the path that is commended to them live a wretched life.To walk on this path may be difficult, but the choice is easy, and to hear the celebration of the path is pleasant. Wisdom offers simple schemes, but truth is not so simple." ~ Walter Kaufmann
15. "Reason may not always tell us what to believe, but it can help us on what we shouldn't believe." ~ Walter Kaufmann
16. "Men love jargon. It is so palpable, tangible, visible, audible; it makes so obvious what one has learned; it satisfies the craving for results. It is impressive for the uninitiated. It makes one feel that one belongs. Jargon divides men into Us and Them….Obscurity is fascinating. One tries to puzzle out details, is stumpred, and becomes increasingly concerned with meaning – unless one feels put off and gives up altogether.Those who persevere and take the author seriously are led to ask about what he could possibly have meant, but rarely seem to wonder or discuss whether what he says is true." ~ Walter Kaufmann
17. "What Pascal overlooked was the hair-raising possibility that God might out-Luther Luther. A special area in hell might be reserved for those who go to mass. Or God might punish those whose faith is prompted by prudence. Perhaps God prefers the abstinent to those who whore around with some denomination he despises. Perhaps he reserves special rewards for those who deny themselves the comfort of belief. Perhaps the intellectual ascetic will win all while those who compromised their intellectual integrity lose everything.There are many other possibilities. There might be many gods, including one who favors people like Pascal; but the other gods might overpower or outvote him, à la Homer. Nietzsche might well have applied to Pascal his cutting remark about Kant: when he wagered on God, the great mathematician 'became an idiot." ~ Walter Kaufmann
18. "Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya." ~ Walter Kaufmann
19. "The good must be clearly good but not wholly clear. If it is wholly clear it is too easy to reject.What is wanted is an oversimplification, a reduction of a multitude of possibilities to only two. But if the recommended path were utterly devoid of mystery, it would cease to fascinate men….There would be nothing left to discuss and interpret, to lecture and write about, to admire and merely think about.The world exacts a price for calling teachers wise: it keeps discussing the paths they recommend, but few men follow them. The wise give men endless opportunities to discuss what is good." ~ Walter Kaufmann
20. "God is present when I confront You. But if I look away from You, I ignore him. As long as I merely experience or use you, I deny God. But when I encounter You I encounter him." ~ Walter Kaufmann
21. "No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche." ~ Walter Kaufmann
22. "When Hegel later became a man of influence' he insisted that the Jews should be granted equal rights because civic rights belong to man because he is a man and not on account of his ethnic origins or his religion." ~ Walter Kaufmann
23. "The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism." ~ Walter Kaufmann
24. "The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?" ~ Walter Kaufmann
25. "It was also Hegel who established the view that the different philosophic systems that we find in history are to be comprehended in terms of development and that they are generally one-sided because they owe their origins to a reaction against what has gone before." ~ Walter Kaufmann
26. "Thirdly, even if we assume that the world is governed by purpose, we need only add that this purpose - or, if there are several, at least one of them - is not especially intent on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering or actually rejoices in it." ~ Walter Kaufmann
27. "Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate; it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life." ~ Walter Kaufmann
28. "In all three cases, and for most human beings, the problem of suffering poses no difficult problem at all: one has a world picture in which suffering has its place, a world picture that takes suffering into account." ~ Walter Kaufmann
29. "It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose." ~ Walter Kaufmann
30. "The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam; but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering." ~ Walter Kaufmann
31. "The Golden Rule is intolerable; if millions did to others whatever they wished others to do to them, few would be safe from molestation. The Golden Rule shows anything but moral genius, and the claim by which it is followed in the Sermon on the Mount -- "this is the Law and the Prophets" -- makes little sense." ~ Walter Kaufmann
32. "To an even moderately sophisticated and well-read person it should come as no surprise that any religion at all has its hidden as well as its obvious beauties and is capable of profound and impressive interpretations. What is deeply objectionable about most of these interpretations is that they allow the believer to say Yes while evading any No." ~ Walter Kaufmann

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Today's Quote

We do not see the world as it is. We see the word as we are."
Author: Anaïs Nin

What Did Walter Kaufmann Talk About?

Ring
Suffer
Suffering
Here
Thin
Hey
Lit
Wit
Con
Per
Era
Lie
Able
Ear
Sin
Use
Low
Ten
Ally
Sing
End
While
Cause
Act
Less
Hen
Tan
Tie
Mean
Tell
Son
Read
Purpose
Deep
Rate
Few
Los
Prefer
Easy
Nation
Turn
Ways
Owe
Ended
Job
Claim
Problem
Follow
Comfort
Worth

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