Walter Kaufmann Short Quotes

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The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.

Walter Kaufmann
For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

Walter Kaufmann
Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.

Walter Kaufmann
Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.

Walter Kaufmann
Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.

Walter Kaufmann
The great artist liberates the emotions and recreates the sheer wonder of childhood without surrendering the development of the intellect.

Walter Kaufmann
Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.

Walter Kaufmann
To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic.

Walter Kaufmann
Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate; it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life.

Walter Kaufmann
It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose.

Walter Kaufmann
The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepen his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.

Walter Kaufmann
The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam; but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering.

Walter Kaufmann
Those who believe in God because their experience of life and the facts of nature prove his existence must have led sheltered lives and closed their hearts to the voice of their brothers' blood.

Walter Kaufmann
It is less than honest to give one's own religion the benefit of every possible doubt while imposing unsympathetic readings on other religions. Yet this is what practically all religious people do.

Walter Kaufmann