Arthur Schopenhauer — "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants."
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Arthur Schopenhauer
"The more intelligent a man is, the more pain he will experience."
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
"To be alone is the fate of all great minds – a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils."
"Life is a constant dying."
"The world is a collection of unhappy beings."
About Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
German philosopher of pessimism whose The World as Will and Representation (1819) defined the suffering-and-renunciation tradition. Closely associated with Immanuel Kant (the system Schopenhauer built on and revised). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the rational unfolding of Spirit — Schopenhauer scheduled his Berlin lectures opposite Hegel's and spent decades attacking Hegel's optimistic system as deliberately mystifying nonsense — the foundational rivalry of 19th-century German philosophy.
The standard scholarly entry points to Arthur Schopenhauer's work: Bryan Magee (Oxford, populariser-philosopher) — The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983); Christopher Janaway (Southampton, Schopenhauer specialist) — Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy (1989); David E. Cartwright (Wisconsin–Whitewater) — Schopenhauer: A Biography (2010). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Arthur Schopenhauer.