“ If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert… William Barrett
“ What emerges from these separate strands of (modern) history is an image of man himself that bears a new, stark, more nearly naked, and more questionable aspect. The contraction of man's horizons amou… William Barrett
“ The nature of consciousness is to point beyond itself. It is a tending toward or pointing to... Since consciousness points beyond itself, it is in its very being a self-transcendence. William Barrett
“ The more severely he struggles to hold on to the primal face-to-face relation with God, the more tenuous this becomes, until in the end the relation to God Himself threatens to become a relation to No… William Barrett
“ In teaching the young you have to satisfy the schoolchild in yourself and enter the region where all meanings start. That is where, in any case, the philosopher has perpetually to start. William Barrett
“ Even if there were no ear for them but the void, our prayers would still be the only things that sanctify our existence. William Barrett
“ Not only do I not know what I believe, but also I cannot know for sure that I believe. How can I define precisely what my attitude is toward something it cannot conceivably grasp? Can I be said to be… William Barrett
“ From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and h… William Barrett
“ A society coming apart at top and bottom, or passing over into another form, contains just as many possibilities for revelation as a society running along smoothly in its own rut. The individual is th… William Barrett
“ Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe. William Barrett
“ What has to be accepted, the given, is forms of life.' (Wittgenstein) This is the fact, the given, from which all thinking must start; and thinking, which starts from this fact, is in turn itself but… William Barrett
“ Certainly, we can no longer look upon the canon of Western art - Greco-Roman as revived, extended, and graced by the Renaissance - as -the- tradition in art, or even any longer as distinctly and uniqu… William Barrett
“ The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived. William Barrett
“ We have come to understand the phenomena of life only as an assemblage of the lifeless. We take the mechanistic abstractions of our technical calculation to be ultimately concrete and "fundamentally r… William Barrett
“ There is no truth that does not ultimately rest upon what is evident to us in our own experience. William Barrett
“ The happiness of mankind, if it ever should come to pass, would still leave men asking: Why? What point to it? To what end? William Barrett
“ The bond that attaches us to the life outside ourselves is the same bond that holds us to our own life. William Barrett
“ The deflation, or flattening out, of values in Modern art does not necessarily indicate an ethical nihilism. Quite the contrary; in opening our eyes to the rejected elements of existence, art may lead… William Barrett
“ Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically "meaningful," while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day… William Barrett
