“I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me
whether what I have thought has already been
thought before me by another.”
Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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Ludwig Wittgenstein 228
Austrian-British philosopher 1889–1951Related quotes

Pourtant il me semble que, n'eussé-je connu ni Dostoïevski, ni Nietzsche, ni Freud, ni X. ou Z., j'aurais pensé tout de même, et que j'ai trouvé chez eux plutôt une autorisation qu'un éveil. Surtout ils m'ont appris à ne plus douter de moi-même, à ne pas avoir peur de ma pensée et à me laisser mener par elle, puisqu'aussi bien je les y retrouvais.
“Characters,” p. 306
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Letter to Cassandra (1801-01-08) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

I Wonder What Happened to Him
Song lyrics, Dance Band on the Titanic (1977)

“Philosophy has taught me to rely on my own convictions rather than on the judgements of others and to concern myself less with whether I am well thought of than whether what I do or say is evil.”
Docuit me ipsa philosophia a propria potius conscientia quam ab externis pendere iuditiis, cogitareque semper, non tam ne male audiam, quam ne quid male vel dicam ipse vel agam.
25. 160; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Alles Gescheite ist schon gedacht worden.
Man muss nur versuchen, es noch einmal zu denken.
Bk. II, Observations in the Mindset of the Wanderer: Art, Ethics, Nature
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)
Variant: All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Hans Arp's quote on drawing on the black surface; as quoted in Search for the Real, Hans Hofmann, Addison Gallery of modern Art, 1948
1940s