No matter what people consider their purpose and good to be, science will be the study of this purpose and good.
Wise people study in order to know; worthless people study in order to be known.
— Eastern wisdom
The things that in our time are called science and art are creations of idle minds and feelings, whose aim is to stimulate similar idle minds and feelings. Our sciences and arts are incomprehensible and meaningless to ordinary people because they do not have their good in sight.
A human being lives only to assist his own good and the good of his neighbors as far as his strength and his situation allows. In order to reach his end goal in less time, he relies on the experience of his predecessors. He studies.
To study for another reason, to simply be able to retell all that others have done, means to engage in the last of sciences. There is as little sense in calling such a person a true scholar as calling a catalog a book. To be a human being means not only to know, but to also do the same for the future generations as our predecessors have done for us. Should I really be spending my life studying the history of the scholars only to avoid discovering anew something that has already been discovered? The same thought is repeated twice, and there is no harm in that as long as it is expressed from a new perspective. If you had thought for yourself, then your discovery of that which has already been discovered will still be of use.
— Lichtenberg
To attain moral perfection you must above all take care of your spiritual purity. And spiritual purity is attained only when the heart seeks the truth and the will strives towards holiness. And all this depends on true knowledge.
— Confucius
If you are asked how one could recognize a prophet, reply: he is the one who teaches me about my own heart.
— The Desatir
When people study for their own sake, their studies are useful to them; but when people do it for others, in order to appear learned, such learnedness is not only useless, but harmful.
— Chinese wisdom
Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
— Thoreau
The purpose of every individual person’s life is the same: perfection in goodness. And therefore only the knowledge that leads towards this is necessary.
