“Excess of interest in both her own and in the stranger’s personality merge in feminine surrender, the urge to lose herself completely in a human being; but in so doing, she does justice neither to self nor to the humanity of another, and, at the same time, becomes unfit for exercising other duties.
Also connected to the false pursuit of prestige is a perverted desire for totality and inclusiveness, a mania to know everything and thereby to skim the surface of everything and to plunge deeply into nothing. However, such superficiality can never be true humanity.”

—  Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Excess of interest in both her own and in the stranger’s personality merge in feminine surrender, the urge to lose hers…" by Edith Stein?
Edith Stein photo
Edith Stein 34
Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher 1891–1942

Related quotes

Narendra Modi photo

“My upbringing does not allow me to take a life… When we go against nature then everything becomes dangerous; human beings too become dangerous. On the other hand, if we co-operate with nature, then she also co-operates with us.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Quoted in Bear Grylls impressed with Modi’s 'humility'; says PM calm during crisis, agreed to sit in homemade raft https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/bear-grylls-impressed-with-modis-humility-says-pm-calm-during-crisis-agreed-to-sit-in-homemade-raft/articleshow/70615908.cms Bear Grylls
2019

Andrea Dworkin photo
Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“There are only two divisions in the world to-day — human beings and Germans. And the German knows it. Human beings have long ago sickened of him and everything connected with him,of all he does, says, thinks and believes.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Speech at Southport, June 22, 1915. Quoted in The New York Times Current History, Volume 2; Volume 4. New York Times Company, 1917. Also quoted in Paul Piazza, Christopher Isherwood: Myth and Anti-Myth. Columbia Univesity Press, 2010 (p.217).

Malcolm X photo
Amartya Sen photo
Joe Armstrong photo

“Everything is interesting, everything does connect, but anything don't work.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The How and Why of Fitting Things Together

Zafar Mirzo photo
Martin Luther photo

“The human being, corrupted to the root, can neither desire nor perform anything but evil.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

The Making of Martin Luther, By Richard Rex, p66
Attributed

Stanisław Lem photo

“The book does not contain “everything about the human being,” because that is impossible. The largest libraries in the world do not contain “everything.””

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

The quantity of anthropological data discovered by scientists now exceeds any individual’s ability to assimilate it. The division of labor, including intellectual labor, begun thirty thousand years ago in the Paleolithic, has become an irreversible phenomenon, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue. A logocracy of quarreling experts might be no better than the rule of the mediocrities to which we are subject. The declining intellectual quality of political leadership is the result of the growing complexity of the world. Since no one, be he endowed with the highest wisdom, can grasp it in its entirety, it is those who are least bothered by this who strive for power.
One Human Minute (1986)

Related topics