“There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.”

—  Franz Kafka, book The Zürau Aphorisms

56
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 2, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature." by Franz Kafka?
Franz Kafka photo
Franz Kafka266
author 1883–1924

Related quotes

Yehuda Ashlag photo

“Indeed, if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question, I am certain that all these questions and doubts will vanish from the horizon, and you will look unto their place to find them gone. This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, “What is the meaning of my life?” In other words, these numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them, to complete them to the fullest, who is it that enjoys them?”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On the Meaning of Life

“Life is full of questions, and we are free to ask them, to understand, occasionally, that we are not going to get an answer, or at least not the answer we expect, and then we are called to move on. But I believe that God encourages us to ask questions.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Rock that Is Higher (1993)

Karl Popper photo

“We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee
Context: Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us.... We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God.”

Aurelius Augustinus De doctrina christiana

1:14 http://books.google.com/books?id=9dJGZkTAqJsC&amp;q=&amp;quot;we+were+ensnared+by+the+wisdom+of+the+serpent+we+are+set+free+by+the+foolishness+of+god&amp;quot;&amp;pg=PA10#v=onepage <br class="br">Latin: Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur. <br class="br">De doctrina christiana

“We often take for granted the terms, the premises, and the methods that prevail in our time and place. We take for granted, as the starting points for our own thinking, the outcomes of a process of thinking by our predecessors. … New questions are built from the answers that were given to the old questions, but the old questions are now no longer asked. Foundations get covered up by what is built upon them.”

Harvey Flaumenhaft (1938) American writer

Preface to Masterworks of Discovery series (2011)

“When and if we choose to rear our infants and children in an affectional environment of positive reinforcements, then… by the very nature of that environment we will be free and dignified.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Before Ethics and Morality" (1972)

“When we are set free from the bondage of pleasing others, when we are free from currying others'approval-then no one will be able to make us miserable or dissatisfied. And then, if we know we have pleased God, contentment will be our consolation.”

Kay Arthur (1933) International Bible teacher/four-time ECPA Christian Book Award winning author

Werner Erhard photo

“Most of our notions about the world come from a set of assumptions which we take for granted, and which, for the most part, we don't examine or question. We bring these assumptions to the table with us as a given. They are so much a part of who we are that it is difficult for us to separate ourselves from them enough to be able to talk about them. We do not think these assumptions, we think from them.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Source: Article, "Breaking Out of the Box -A Crash Course in Paradigm Thinking" Debra Feinstein, BENCHMARK Magazine, FALL 1989 p.3

Lorin Morgan-Richards photo

“We are free falling backward through time, reincarnating ourselves from our past, reflecting the chaotic energy of the present.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

As quoted in the Sunday Mail, Glasgow.

William James photo

“We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Related topics