The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.

The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.

Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.

My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.