Humanist Without Portfolio Quotes

“As soon as one stops searching for knowledge, or if one imagines that it need not be creatively sought in the depths of the human spirit but can be assembled extensively by collecting and classifying facts, everything is irrevocably and forever lost.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“All growth toward perfection is but a returning to original existence.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“Human nature must be something which always remains one and the same, but which may be carried out in manifold ways.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“If something possesses no capacity for activity whatever, it is nothing; it may be wholly penetrated, but it cannot be touched. Therefore passivity and reaction are everywhere equal.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“The best and noblest parts of man depend precious little on culture, education, and whatever else it is called. One can never have enough respect for true humanity as it is visible in the persons of the totally uneducated classes, and never enough humility if one sometimes believes one is superior to them.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“Joy mingled with sadness, even with grief, is the deepest human joy. It winds itself about the soul with indescribable sweetness, with a dim but unerring sense for what will some day be born of it.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“We have not the remotest realistic inkling of a consciousness which is not self-consciousness.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“The sum of the knowable, that soil which the human spirit must till, lies between all the languages and independent of them, at their center. But man cannot approach this purely objective realm other than through his own modes of cognition and feeling, in other words: subjectively. Just where study and research touch the highest and deepest point, just there does the mechanical, logical use of reason - whatever in us can most easily be separated from our uniqueness as individual human beings - find itself at the end of its rope. From here on we need a process of inner perception and creation. And all that we can plainly know about this is its result, namely, that objective truth always rises from the entire energy of subjective individuality.”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt

“To judge a man means nothing other than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative?”
― Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt