If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?

I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experience.

The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.