Ernst Cassirer Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.

Ernst Cassirer
Knowledge of the name gives him who knows it mastery even over the being and will of the god.

Ernst Cassirer
Since art and science move in entirely different planes, they cannot contradict or thwart one another.

Ernst Cassirer
We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.

Ernst Cassirer
Religion claims to be in possession of an absolute truth; but its history is a history of errors and heresies. It gives us the promise and prospect of a transcendent world - far beyond the limits of our human experience - and it remains human, all too human.

Ernst Cassirer
Are we to be disgusted with science because it has not fulfilled our hopes or redeemed its promises? And are we, for this reason, to announce the "bankruptcy" of science, as is so often and so flippantly done? But this is rash and foolish: for we can hardly blame science just because we have not asked the right questions.

Ernst Cassirer
Science is the last step in man's mental development and it may be regarded as the highest and most characteristic attainment of human culture.

Ernst Cassirer
Each theory becomes a Procrustean bed in which the empirical facts are stretched to fit a preconceived pattern.

Ernst Cassirer