Harald Høffding Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

Strictly speaking, experience demands not only applied mathematics, but also applied logic. All phenomena, if we are to understand them, must be comprehended within the concepts of quantity and cause.

Harald Høffding
The age of theology and of speculation is gone by; positive philosophy is the only salvation. Men will gradually leave off asking questions to which positive science can furnish no answer.

Harald Høffding
Enthusiasm for positive thought is accompanied, in Comte, by a fervent, we may say mystical, love of humanity; — an emotional need which made such energetic demands for satisfaction that it several times threatened to destroy his sanity.

Harald Høffding
Everything great arises and grows in silence! Only he who can be silent becomes a great man, and a great act which is undertaken with full consciousness of its greatness is, when viewed aright, seen to be a little act.

Harald Høffding
The highest truth can only exist for man in the form of a symbol; the symbol speaks and is silent, discovers and conceals at the same time.

Harald Høffding
Constant modification by the environment causes life to assume new forms, amongst others those forms under which it is now exhibited. We cannot, therefore, hope to explain the conscious life of the individual from his own experiences alone; we must go back to the experience of the race.

Harald Høffding
At first men expect happiness in this life. When they discover that the goods which confer happiness are only apparent, this hope is transferred to a future life. This is the second stage of illusion. But the belief in the "beyond" cannot maintain itself; confidence in the life on earth revives, but now, taught by experience, men no longer expect the immediate enjoyment of happiness, but look for a state of general blessedness for the human race in some distant future and exert all their energies to prepare the way for this future. This is the third and last stage of illusion, in which men will probably remain for a long while.

Harald Høffding
Whatever fate may be in store for philosophy, her history can hardly fail to present a twofold interest ; for philosophical ideas are symptoms of the direction in which the spiritual development of the age is tending, and they are attempts to solve the great problems which have their root in the theoretical and practical relations in which man stands to the Universe of which he is a part.

Harald Høffding