16 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes on Ethics

Arthur Schopenhauer quotes on ethics

5. Compassion is the basis of all morality.

10. Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

16. There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.

22. Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

29. Honor ... means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

50. * Hatred is a thing of the heart, contempt a thing of the head. Hatred and contempt are decidedly antagonistic towards one another and mutually exclusive. A great deal of hatred, indeed, has no other source than a compelled respect for the superior qualities of some other person; conversely, if you were to consider hating every miserable wretch you met you would have your work cut out: it is much easier to despise them one and all. True, genuine contempt, which is the obverse of true, genuine pride, stays hidden away in secret and lets no one suspect its existence: for if you let a person you despise notice the fact, you thereby reveal a certain respect for him, inasmuch as you want him to know how low you rate him - which betrays not contempt but hatred, which excludes contempt and only affects it. Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.

72. A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten

76. Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

77. There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?

88. In Christian ethics ... animals are seen as mere things. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coarsing, bull-fights and horse-races and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with their heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that fails to recognise the eternal essence that exists in every living thing and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun.

91. Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into.

94. There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.

98. The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

102. Have these gentlemen of the scalpel and crucible no notion at all then that they are first and foremost men and chemists only secondly? How can you sleep soundly, knowing you have harmless animals under lock and key, in order to starve them slowly to death? Don't you wake up screaming, in the night?

111. Reason is feminine in nature: it will give only after it has received.

127. Ich glaube nicht an die Freiheit des Willens. Schopenhauers Wort: >Der Mensch kann wohl tun was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will.< begleitet mich in allen Lebenslagen und versohnt mich mit den Handlungen der Menschen, auch wenn sie mir recht schmerzlich sind. Diese Erkenntnis von der Unfreiheit des Willens schutzt mich davor, mich selbst und die Mitmenschen als handelnde und urteilende Individuen allzu ernst zu nehmen und den guten Humor zu verlieren.