958 Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

Every truth passes through 3 stages before it is recognized 1)ridicule 2) opposition 3) accepted as self-evident.

History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.