‘The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man’s being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.’ – Karl Jaspers

‘I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker’s questions to become comprehensible.’ – Karl Jaspers