"The life of humans is given meaning only by their deeds."
"Whatever benefits the self-interested is propagandised by the naive."
"There is no final solution and there is no happiness that is not in danger."
"Post-modern mash is easily digested but it does not constitute nutritious food."
"Only intellectuals contend that intellectuals understand the world better than others."
"The only thing that a world state could guarantee is the conversion of all wars into civil wars."
"Pluralism is the ideology of satiated felicity – the hungy do not respect the values of the satiated."
"Everyone has equal rights in delusions, since not everyone has equal ability or courage in attaining knowledge."
"Whoever contends that History has ended might as well be certain that History awaits them around the next corner."
"Most people consider it roughly unnatural for other opposing
viewpoints to prevail. I, on the contrary, am surprised when someone
agrees with me."
"The key is to think historically – the answers to historical problems
are not to be found in a constructed theory, but on the contrary, the
answers to theoretical problems are to be found in history."
"...the garrulous and lachrymose pseudo-humanism that characterises
public discourse in the West does not mean any tangible disposition for
drastic world-wide redistribution of material prosperity."
"The proclamation of human rights today is connected with - and in the
future it will be connected even more closely - with the once explicit
desire that one's dear fellow man should sit in his own country and
enjoy his human dignity over there."
“[the philosophers'] position is in part tragic and in part comical
because they themselves cannot transubstantiate… power into their own
social domination and, correspondingly, they dream that masters will
one day philosophise rather than philosophers prevail.”
"Speaking in jest, I confess to friends that, since reading pleases me
so much, I should have never made writing my profession, and Ι
recollect with envy Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, who said that he likes reading so much that it does not give him any motive to write books himself."
"Humans will be called "humans", precisely like lions are called lions
and mice - mice, without any other ethnic, national or ideological
differentiation. It might appear to be a paradox, but it is true that a
human separated himself from all the other animal species precisely
because he was not only a human without any other predicate."
"If the same Western Powers, which in 1919 rejected Japan's demand and
denied safeguarding the equality of races in the Treaty of Versailles,
in the year 1998 officially bend over backwards for the sake of the
understanding of foreign cultures, that does not definitely constitute
the progress of understanding. However, it does constitute a sign of a
dramatic about-face in the global correlation of forces."
"The de-ideologisation and the merging of politics with the economy, in
the final analysis, mean that in the hereafter conflicts will be
conducted for tangible material goods, without notable ideological
mediations. Thus, to be precise, we should characterise the end of
ideologies as a partial return to the animal kingdom. If it is
attractive and desirable for the farewelling of Utopia to reach up to
there, remains a matter of taste."
"Just as the philosopher [Kant] believed, it is exactly the "mixing" and
"merging" of peoples which puts peace in danger. But even if the
democratic peoples remained separate like good neighbours, as Kant
preferred, again they would not be lacking in war-mongering arguments
in the event they are needed. Nobody will deny the principle that
"democracies do not wage war against each other" - only that he will
add that the opponent is not a "genuine democrat.""
"In order to avoid hysteria in the face of complete and irrevocable
death, eschatological hysteria was legitimised world-theoretically.
Whoever learns to live without spoken or unspoken eschatologies and
without ethicisms as their substitutes, has to learn to die, completely
and irrevocably, with psychic tranquility and drollness. This highest
of lessons is learnt in classical ancient times, which ignored the
straight line with the propitious end in order to fasten itself to the
eternal cycle."
"...a substantial contribution to knowledge of human affairs requires a
total existential commitment, an unwinking observation of specific
situations and living people, and a ceaseless refining of observations
with implacable contemplation, which does not retreat before any
prejudice and does not fear clashing with whomever and whatever. This
stance can be called an ethic by someone (it is certainly a form of
internal asceticism), but it has no relation with ethics as rules of
social behaviour; on the contrary, it can militate head on against such
ethics."
"Of course, the garrulous and lachrymose pseudo-humanism that
characterises public discourse in the West does not mean any tangible
disposition for drastic world-wide redistribution of material
prosperity. On the other hand, the extremely dangerous paradox of the
planetary situation means that even “just” solutions such as
self-denial without historical precedent would not offer a long-term
way out. If the wealth e.g. of 800 million is divided amongst six
billion, everyone will simply become a brother in poverty – conversely:
if a Chinese, Indian and African were to consume per capita as much raw
material and as much energy as a North American, that could entail
ecological collapse."
"The production of ahistorical theory and theory ignorant of history is
deep down an easy matter, and that is why so many, famous and unknown,
indulge in it, wanting to believe that the substitution of an arbitrary
concept with another arbitrary concept or with a new combination of
concepts is a significant contribution to thought. All of that
comprises symptoms of a permanent intellectual adolescence. The
intellect reaches a maturity when it is in a position to give a
specific analysis of a specific situation. Only the clueless will call
that narrow-mindedness and empiricism. It is exactly the specific
analysis of specific situations which shows the true texture and
usefulness of conceptual and methodological tools."