Friedrich Schiller Quote

They have founded the whole structure of their happiness on these very illusions, which ought to be combated and dissipated by the light of knowledge, and they would think they were paying too dearly for a truth which begins by robbing them of all that has value in their sight. It would be necessary that they should be already sages to love wisdom: a truth that was felt at once by him to whom philosophy owes its name.

Letter 8; Variant: They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom. - On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)