Wilhelm Gustloff Quotes

The Wilhelm Gustloff was pregnant with lost souls conceived of war. They would crowd into her belly and she would give birth to their freedom. ~ Ruta Sepetys

The soul is presupposed as a ready-made agent, which displays such features as its acts and utterances, from which we can learn what it is, what sort of faculties and powers it possesses
all without being aware that the act and utterance of what the soul is really invests it with that character in our conception and makes it reach a higher stage of being than it explicitly had before. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

War is progress, peace is stagnation ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

True love should be, according to its origin, entirely arbitrary and entirely accidental at the same time; it should seem both necessary and free; in keeping with its nature, however, it should be both destiny and virtue and appear as a mystery and a miracle. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge ... it would not be the source of necessary truths ... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting. ~ August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher. His writing included critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. Nietzsche began his career as a philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems, which would plague him for most of his life. In 1889 he exhibited symptoms of a serious mental illness, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey

If this war is not fought with the greatest brutality against the bands both in the East and in the Balkans then in the foreseeable future the strength at our disposal will not be sufficient to be able to master this plague. ~ Wilhelm Keitel

Every seemingly arbitrary destructive action is a reaction of the organism to the frustration of a gratification of a vital need, especially of a sexual need. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Mystical organizations are only a crystallization of facts which can be found, in a more diffuse and less tangible form, in all strata of people. The degree of mystical, sentimental and sadistic feelings corresponds exactly to the degree of the disturbance of natural orgastic experience. Close observation of the audience of a trashy thriller or of a boxing match teaches more about these problems than a hundred handbooks of sexology. ~ Wilhelm Reich

A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The inquiry into the proper aims and limits of State agency must be of the highest importance nay, that it is perhaps more vitally momentous than any other political question. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In a true tragedy, both parties must be right. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print - I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books: "Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip? "Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. "Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? "Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera. ~ Mark Twain

The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

We know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object ... At times the attention turns towards the object most intensely, and at times the energy flags. ~ Wilhelm Wundt

To inquire and to create; these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The history of imitation of the older literature, particularly abroad, has among other advantages this one, that the important concepts of unintentional parody and passive wit can be deduced from it most easily and comprehensively. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The casting of the brash United States Army Air Force officer Colonel Robert E. Hogan and the pompous German Luftwaffe officer Colonel Wilhelm Klink was inspired. For this series - a comedy with the serious backdrop of war - to succeed, the lead players had to be the perfect fit. The dynamic portrayal of this military odd couple had to be articulate, accurate, and precise. For the show to work, for the concept to be accepted, for one of the most outlandish premises in television history to be believed, the actors signed to play the two leading characters not only had to bring these extreme individuals to life with broad, fictional strokes, they had to make them real in the details. ~ Carol M. Ford

Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

A poem does not exist in and of itself but instead exists only in relation to the human being, Wilhelm wrote to Savigny, just as the sun in effect does not shine when we have our eyes closed. ~ Ann Schmiesing

A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey

According to a Confucian view, there are four steps in social develpment, wrote Wilhem (Sr.). There are the individual, the family, the state, and mankind. The West had always emphasized the individual and the state. Individual development is extolled, and the single human being is regarded as central and as an atom of society. Over-emphasis on the function of the individual has led to deterioration of the family. Unlike Westerners, the Chinese have given greater weight to family and mankind. The consciousness of the individual is contained in the family, and since traditional China considered itself the world, Chinese considered themselves responsible for humankind rather than for the state. ~ Hellmut Wilhelm

There is no greatness without a continual solicitation to madness which, while it must be overcome, must never be completely lacking. One might profit by classifying men in this respect. The one kind are those in whom there is no madness at all ... and are so-called men of intellect whose works and deeds are nothing but cold works and deeds of the intellect.... But where there is no madness, there is, to be sure, also no real, active, living intellect. For wherein is intellect to prove itself but in the conquest, mastery, and ordering of madness? ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

There was a happy irony in the first cousin of the autocratic Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II (with whom George bore a striking resemblance) furthering British democracy. ~ Paul Ham

The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very interesting which would not have been so otherwise. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

... apart from its function as communication, human language also often functions as a defense. The spoken word conceals the expressive language of the biological core. In many cases, the function of speech has deteriorated to such a degree that the words express nothing whatever and merely represent a continuous, hollow activity on the part of the musculature of the neck and the organs of speech. On the basis of repeated experiences, it is my opinion that in many psychoanalyses which have gone on for years the treatment has become stuck in this pathological use of language. This clinical experience can, indeed has to be applied to the social sphere. Endless numbers of speeches, publications, political debates do not have the function of getting at the root of important questions of life but of drowning them in verbiage. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance.

Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history.

Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's repre ~ Wilhelm Reich