Otto Weininger quotes

Every true, eternal problem is an equally true, eternal fault; every answer an atonement, every realisation an improvement. (Otto Weininger)
Fate determines many things, no matter how we struggle.
Otto Weininger
No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.
Otto Weininger
The fixed stars signify the angel in man. That is why man orients himself by them; and that is why women have no appreciation for the starry sky; because they have no sense of the angel in man.
Otto Weininger
Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind.
Otto Weininger
Woman, in short, has an unconscious life, man a conscious life, and the genius the most conscious life.
Otto Weininger
The deepest, the intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad.
Otto Weininger
The psychical condition of men's minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity.
Otto Weininger
To understand a man is really to be that man.
Otto Weininger
Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.
Otto Weininger
Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all. (Otto Weininger)
There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.
Otto Weininger
In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension.
Otto Weininger
As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius.
Otto Weininger
The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. ... It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history.
Otto Weininger
With ordinary men the moments which are united in a close continuity out of the original discrete multiplicity are very few, and the course of their lives resembles a little brook, whereas with the genius it is more like a mighty river into which all the little rivulets flow from afar; that is to say, the universal comprehension of genius vibrates to no experience in which all the individual moments have not been gathered up and stored.
Otto Weininger
A creature that cannot grasp the mutual exclusiveness of A and not A has no difficulty in lying; more than that, such a creature has not even any consciousness of lying, being without a standard of truth.
Otto Weininger
Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity.
Otto Weininger
A man is first reverent about himself, and self-respect is the first stage in reverence for all things.
Otto Weininger
A man is himself important precisely in proportion that all things seem important to him.
Otto Weininger
In order to depict a man one must understand him, and to understand him one must be like him; in order to portray his psychological activities one must be able to reproduce them in oneself. To understand a man one must have his nature in oneself. (Otto Weininger)
The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, ... deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action.
Otto Weininger
The number of different aspects that the face of a man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his ... genius.
Otto Weininger
All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.
Otto Weininger
If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make any impression on them. All hopes of progress depend on this being untrue. And it is untrue. The difference between men of genius and the others is quantitative not qualitative, of degree not of kind.
Otto Weininger