Ernst Cassirer Quotes

The form of observation , which underlines all speech and language development, always expresses a peculiar spiritual character , a special way of conceiving and apprehending. The difference between the several languages, therefore, is not a matter of different sounds and marks, but of different world conceptions.

The past is preserved only in darkness, the future is not raised to the level of an image, as something which can be anticipated. It is the symbolic expression which first creates the possibility of looking backward and looking forward... What occurred in the past, now separated out from the totality of representations, no longer passes away, once the sounds of language have placed their seals on it and given it a certain stamp.

Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.

To learn a new language is, therefore, always a sort of spiritual adventure; it is like a journey of discovery in which we find a new world.

Knowledge of the name gives him who knows it mastery even over the being and will of the god.

The special task of philosophy must always be to oppose the intellectual division of labour, no matter how useful and even indispensable it may be to the progress of science. Philosophy can never deny its own universal character, and if it yields to the spirit of mere facts, if it ceases to be systematic and "encyclopedic," it will really have renounced itself.

Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits.

Religion claims to be in possession of an absolute truth; but its history is a history of errors and heresies. It gives us the promise and prospect of a transcendent world - far beyond the limits of our human experience - and it remains human, all too human.

The course of the world constantly and inevitably frustrates our moral demands.

We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.