75 Quotes by Karl Jaspers

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.

Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.