We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures.
William BarrettTo discover one's own spiritual poverty is to achieve a positive conquest by the spirit.
William BarrettAnxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread.
William BarrettThe philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.
William BarrettThe bond that attaches us to the life outside ourselves is the same bond that holds us to our own life.
William BarrettFrom what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background.
William Barrett