We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights that while the principle of contradiction helps confirm the validity of concepts, it does not create new ideas or concepts on its own.
Arthur Schopenhauer's quote suggests that the principle of contradiction, a foundational aspect of logic, serves to support the coherence of our concepts rather than generate them. It emphasizes the distinction between validating existing ideas and the creative process of forming new concepts, pointing to a limitation in how logic can inform our understanding of knowledge and reality.
Themes
PrincipleContradictionPhilosophyLogicConcepts
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical debate, when discussing the nature of certainty and knowledge.
More from Arthur Schopenhauer
All quotes βTo be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Similar quotes
A universe with a creator would be a totally different kind of universe, scientifically speaking, than one without.
Richard DawkinsRead
I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.
Albert EinsteinRead
I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life.
Italo CalvinoRead
My feminism does not demand that a woman have an equal opportunity to torture, alongside men. Torture is no less wrong because a woman, not a man, carries it out.
Mona EltahawyRead
Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.
Roberto CalassoRead
People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through, and it really helps you out. At the end of the day, it gets you through because you have to reform your relationship, and you have to figure out a way of getting to the future.
Kay Redfield JamisonRead