On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes.

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific.

What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts.

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought

Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself.

All democracies demand common public education because nothing makes people so much alike as the same education.