Philosophy Quote by R. Scott Bakker — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?”

“Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow.”

“Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.”

“Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.”

“Gods are but greater demons," the Cishaurim said, "hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?”

“So he came to realize that learning a language was perhaps the most profound thing a man could do. Not only did it require wrapping different sounds around the very movement of your soul, it involved learning things somehow already known, as though much of what he was somehow existed apart from him. A kind of enlightenment accompanied these first lessons, a deeper understanding of self.”

“While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil.”

“...we then find the sovereign individual as the ripest fruit on its tree, like only to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual (because ‘autonomous’ and ‘ethical’ are mutually exclusive), in short, we find a man with his own, independent, enduring will, whose prerogative it is to promise – and in him a proud consciousness quivering in every muscle of what he has finally achieved and incorporated, an actual awareness of power and freedom, a feeling that man in general has reached completion.”

“Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.”

“All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks.”

“If I were to ask you to open two novels, and compare the circumstances of each protagonist, asking you to chose who is “better,” you may find this ridiculous. You may tell me these characters have been forged in two different worlds, around different people, and they each have their own inherent purposes. They’re traveling different paths, and they’ll traverse their paths at different speeds, as their meant to. Great. So as such, never again compare yourself to another.”