Otto Weininger Quotes

Everything evil is revenge. ~ Otto Weininger

Only from within himself can a person know the depth of the world: in him lie the interconnections of the world. ~ Otto Weininger

The man of genius is he whose ego has acquired consciousness. He is enabled by it to distinguish the fact that others are different, to perceive the "ego" of other men, even when it is not pronounced enough for them to be conscious of it themselves. But it is only he who feels that every other man is also an ego, a monad, an individual centre of the universe, with specific manner of feeling and thinking and a distinct past, he alone is in a position to avoid making use of his neighbours as means to an end. ~ Otto Weininger

Sending children away to get control of their anger perpetuates the feeling of 'badness inside them ... Chances are they were already feeling not very good about themselves before the outburst and the isolation just serves to confirm in their own minds that they were right. ~ Otto Weininger

An individual's arrogance is always in proportion to his lack of self-assurance. ~ Otto Weininger

No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them ~ Otto Weininger

In those rare individual cases where women approach genius they also approach masculinity. ~ Otto Weininger

The fixed stars signify the angel in man. That is why man orients himself by them; and that is why women have no appreciation for the starry sky; because they have no sense of the angel in man. ~ Otto Weininger

So far as one understands a man, one is that man. The man of genius takes his place in the above argument as he who understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him. ~ Otto Weininger

There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning. ~ Otto Weininger

As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius. ~ Otto Weininger

It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law ... ~ Otto Weininger

A man is himself important precisely in proportion that all things seem important to him. ~ Otto Weininger

Our age is not only Jewish, but also the most 'feminine'; an age in which art represents only a sudarium of its humors; the age of the most gullible anarchism, without any understanding of the State and of justice; the age of the collectivist ethics of the species; the age in which history is viewed with the most astonishing lack of seriousness [historical materialism]; the age of capitalism and of Marxism; the age in which history, life, and science no longer mean anything, apart from economics and technology; the age when genius could be declared a form of madness, while it no longer possesses even one great artist or philosopher; the age of the least originality and its greatest pursuit; the age which can boast of being the first to have exalted eroticism, but not in order to forget oneself, the way the Romans or the Greeks did in their Bacchanalia, but in order to have the illusion of rediscovering oneself and giving substance to one's vanity. ~ Otto Weininger

Great men have always preferred women of the prostitute type. ~ Otto Weininger

There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [ ... ]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line. ~ Otto Weininger

Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it. ~ Otto Weininger

My pleasure in 'hell-raising' in class is my pleasure in chaos, ~ Otto Weininger

With ordinary men the moments which are united in a close continuity out of the original discrete multiplicity are very few, and the course of their lives resembles a little brook, whereas with the genius it is more like a mighty river into which all the little rivulets flow from afar; that is to say, the universal comprehension of genius vibrates to no experience in which all the individual moments have not been gathered up and stored. ~ Otto Weininger

To understand a man is really to be that man. ~ Otto Weininger

Napoleon, the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and therefore, not geniuses. One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself. There is this element in all the conquerors, great or small. Just because he had great gifts, greater than those of any emperor before him, he had greater difficulty in stifling the disapproving voice within him. The motive of his ambition was the craving to stifle his better self. ~ Otto Weininger

Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity. ~ Otto Weininger

The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius. ~ Otto Weininger

The criminal (as slave) often seeks a person of great perfection (and here, as a judge of people's imperfection, the criminal is much harsher than a good man), because he so wants to obtain trust from outside (not through an inner change of mind). If he believes he has found such a person, he gives himself up to him in the most complete slavery, and he searches in an importunate manner for people whom he could serve as a slave. He also wants to live as a slave so as never to be alone. ~ Otto Weininger

The decision must be made between Judaism and Christianity, between business and culture, between male and female, between the race and the individual, between unworhtiness and worth, between the earthly and the higher life, between negation and God-like. Mankind has the choice to make. There are only two poles, and there is no middle way. ~ Otto Weininger

The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination ... It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history. ~ Otto Weininger

Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual. ~ Otto Weininger

I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius. ~ Otto Weininger

A creature that cannot grasp the mutual exclusiveness of A and not A has no difficulty in lying; more than that, such a creature has not even any consciousness of lying, being without a standard of truth. ~ Otto Weininger

Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself ~ Otto Weininger

The Jew is an inborn Communist. ~ Otto Weininger

In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension. ~ Otto Weininger

The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, ... deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action. ~ Otto Weininger

A man is first reverent about himself, and self-respect is the first stage in reverence for all things. ~ Otto Weininger

All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery. ~ Otto Weininger

Every true, eternal problem is an equally true, eternal fault; every answer an atonement, every realisation an improvement. ~ Otto Weininger

The danger of insanity is always present in those who try to penetrate the discipline of logic and pure knowledge. ~ Otto Weininger

Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all. ~ Otto Weininger

In order to depict a man one must understand him, and to understand him one must be like him; in order to portray his psychological activities one must be able to reproduce them in oneself. To understand a man one must have his nature in oneself. ~ Otto Weininger

Mankind occurs as male or female, as something or nothing. Woman has no share in ontological reality, no relation to the thing-in-itself, which, in the deepest interpretation, is the absolute, is God. Man in his highest form, the genius, has such a relation, and for him the absolute is either the conception of the highest worth of existence, in which case he is a philosopher; or it is the wonderful fairyland of dreams, the kingdom of absolute beauty, and then he is an artist. ~ Otto Weininger

The psychical condition of men's minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity. ~ Otto Weininger

The Balkans aren't worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

We [Frisch and Lise Meitner] walked up and down in the snow, I on skis and she on foot (she said and proved that she could get along just as fast that way), and gradually the idea took shape that this was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but rather a process to be explained by Bohr's idea that the nucleus was like a liquid drop; such a drop might elongate and divide itself. ~ Otto Robert Frisch

I have often regretted what I have eaten, but never what I have drunk. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

Colour is the ultimate in art. It is still and will always remain a mystery to us, we can only apprehend it intuitively in flowers. ~ Philipp Otto Runge

I liked to play against all the teams in the National Football League or the American Football League, because they were always a challenge. ~ Jim Otto

All cultures have had a belief in ghosts and a fear of ghosts. People have always told stories, and everybody likes being frightened, especially when you feel safe. Personally, I find them scarier than vampires or zombies. ~ Otto Penzler

The business that leaders are in today, is the business of transforming awareness ... There is deep longing for more meaning, for connections. ~ Otto Scharmer

Great job, you just executed Ben Franklin! - Otto Ray ~ Monet Polny

When the songs pop out, that's like the climax of us building. ~ John Otto

Otto could be extremely convincing. During our sophomore year, he'd persuaded me to boycott McDonald's, even though they'd recently brought back the McRib. ~ Simon Rich

With bad laws and good civil servants it's still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can't help. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

I've been a Raider all my life. ~ Jim Otto

The dissolution of the Party - we will not let such a tremendous, big, and glorious party be so easily crashed: this would then be the moment, when we would begin to fight on all fronts. ~ Otto Bauer

The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

Every child has to raise itself. ~ Otto Frank

We have always had great and loyal fans in Oakland. ~ Jim Otto

Most architects think in drawings, or did think in drawings; today, they think on the computer monitor. I always tried to think three dimensionally. The interior eye of the brain should be not flat but three dimensional so that everything is an object in space. We are not living in a two-dimensional world. ~ Frei Otto

We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components. ~ Otto Neurath

Young actors are serious about their work and don't take any time out from it. I'm very serious about my work; there are probably only two films I've done where I had a really good time. ~ Miranda Otto

What? Had a dry spell of killing people lately? (Susan)
As a matter of fact, yes. If it doesn't end soon, I might get out of practice. (Otto) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

There are no right or wrong, or fair results. There's just the final score. ~ Otto Rehhagel

I usually go with the first instinct, and then build upon that. ~ John Otto

Difficult trainers were the ones most willing to take a chance with a green jockey, and Bill Chandler was a prince compared to Otto Laing. ~ Bev Pettersen

They treat me like a fox, a cunning fellow ( Schlaukopf ) of the first rank. But the truth is that with a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

Some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death. ~ Otto Rank

I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist.
[Letter to Max Otto] ~ John Dewey

Who destroys books? Cities, churches, dictators and fanatics. Their fingers itch to build a pyre and strike the match. On 10 May 1933, students gathered in Berlin to dance around a bonfire of 25,000 volumes of 'un-German' books. They burned, amongst many others, Bertolt Brecht, Otto Dix, Heinrich Heine, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and H.G. Wells. They destroyed them because the contents were too dangerous. ~ Linda Grant

The last entry in Anne's diary is dated August 1, 1944. On August 4, 1944, the eight people hiding in the Secret Annex were arrested. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, the two secretaries working in the building, found Anne's diaries strewn all over the floor. Miep Gies tucked them away in a desk drawer for safekeeping. After the war, when it became clear that Anne was dead, she gave the diaries, unread, to Anne's father, Otto Frank. ~ Anne Frank

The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was one of the few authentic geniuses among nineteenth-century statesmen. ~ Niall Ferguson

The plays I remember are the plays I made a mistake. ~ Jim Otto

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth. ~ Otto Von Bismarck