All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.
Interpretation
Deep thinkers often feel alienated from societal norms and opinions.
This quote by Goethe suggests that individuals who engage in profound and honest thought can develop a sense of hostility or frustration towards societal conventions and the general public. It highlights the struggle of those who seek deeper truths in a world that often prioritizes superficiality and conformity over critical and honest introspection.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the impact of philosophy on society.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
I want to hear an alternative viewpoint, and I don't want girls to be defanged and declawed and pretty and mute.
The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them.
Perhaps that is part of the animals' role among us, to awaken humility, to turn our minds back to the mystery of things, and open our hearts to that most impractical of hopes in which all creation speaks as one.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.
Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.