Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a German philosopher and essayist. He is one of the most prominent figures in the history of philosophy. He emphasized the primacy of the will over both reason and sensation. He was greatly influenced by Indian philosophical thought, which he held was consistent with Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in every significant respect.
Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy is based on studies of Kant, Plato, and the Hindu Upaniṣads. In his principal work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819; The World as Will and Idea, 1883,) he contended that the will (self-consciousness in man and the unconscious forces of nature) is the only reality and that the material world is but an illusion (“idea” or “representation”) created by the will.
Schopenhauer was one of the first Western thinkers to take Indian philosophical thought seriously. Admiring the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of forbearance and resignation, he maintained that happiness is achieved only by renouncing the will (as desired.) Asceticism and purity are the obligations of humankind to terminate the evil. Egoism, which expresses itself principally as ‘the will to live,’ must be conquered.
Schopenhauer also published Ü ber den Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature, 1836,) on how his philosophy was consistent with the sciences, and Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, 1841.)
Schopenhauer’s philosophy influenced many intellectuals, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, and Jorge Luis Borges.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Arthur Schopenhauer
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Thinking, Reading, Literature, Books
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome—to be got over.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Adversity
If there is anything in the world that can really be called a mans property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
The word of man is the most durable of all material.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Language
Faith is like love: it cannot be forced.—As trying to force love begets hatred, so trying to compel religious belief leads to unbelief.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Faith
There is no vice, of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excited so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbors, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor [can] humility mitigate.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Kindness, Success, Friend, Reason, Humility, Vice, Kind
If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Defects, Selfishness
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Honor
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Action
To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Immortality
I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant’s works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Authors & Writing
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Mystery
How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Conflict
The present is the only reality and the only certainty.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Certainty
If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else… Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Identity
Most people take the limits of their vision to be the limits of the world. A few do not. Join them.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: People, Vision
The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: One liners, Boredom, Happiness, Pain
Human existence must be a kind of error…it may be said of it, ‘it is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens’.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Depression
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Age
What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Death, Suicide
Time is that in which all things pass away.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Time
Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Generations
A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Genius
In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life—it will be the solace of my death.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Realistic Expectations
With people with only modest ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Love, Modesty, Talent, People, Hypocrisy, Humility
Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Religion
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Desire, Desires
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