Otto Weininger Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

  Genius, May, Common

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.103, Рипол Классик

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• Fate determines many things, no matter how we struggle.

  Otto Weininger

  Struggle, Fate, Matter

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• 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

  Men, Order, Able

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.105, Рипол Классик

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• To understand a man is really to be that man.

  Otto Weininger

  Men

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.105, Рипол Классик

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• Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself

  Otto Weininger

  Ethics, Logic, Duty

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.159, Рипол Классик

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• The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Running, Genius, Madness

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.184, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Men, Giving, Insanity

  "Sex and Character" by Otto Weininger, (pp. 122-123), 1906.

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• 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

  Taken, Simple, Animal

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• There are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that they have also been without great sorrow or great pain. They would have needed only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love is a sufficient stimulus.

  Otto Weininger

  Pain, First Love, Love Is

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.121, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Men, Titles, Genius

  "Sex and Character" by Otto Weininger, (pp. 139-140), 1906.

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• A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations. As speech has been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists.

  Otto Weininger

  Stars, Lying, Stupid

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.138, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Regret, Men, People

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• A man is himself important precisely in proportion that all things seem important to him.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Important, Proportion

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.127, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Past, Men, Remembrance

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.114, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Reality, Doe, Genius

  "Sex and Character" by Otto Weininger, (p. 139), 1906.

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• Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind.

  Otto Weininger

  Tasks, Virtue, Sanctity

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.159, Рипол Классик

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• Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.

  Otto Weininger

  Blue, Law, Yellow

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.110, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Expression, Years, Ideas

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.121, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Men, Rivers, Ordinary

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.124, Рипол Классик

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• The number of different aspects that the face of a man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his ... genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Taken, Men, Numbers

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.108, Рипол Классик

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• Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared.

  Otto Weininger

  Fire, Oxygen, Flames

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