“Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.”
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Martin Buber58
German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian 1878–1965Related quotes
“Man is the "ethical animal" — ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist
Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 150
Context: Man is the "ethical animal" — ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment — like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being — is based upon his consciousness of himself.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
“If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“Every man is a potential genius until he does something.”
Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager
Page 110.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)
“Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.”
Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek
Variant: Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.
Source: Zorba the Greek
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
72
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Variant: It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
