L'homme ne prend conscience de son être que dans les situations limites. [Autobiographie philosophique (1963)] - Karl Jaspers

Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process...

I do not know which impulse was stronger in me when I began to think: the original thirst for knowledge or the urge to communicate with man. Knowledge attains its full meaning only through the bond that unites men; however, the urge to achieve agreement with another human being was so hard to satisfy. I was shocked by the lack of understanding, paralyzed, as it were, by every reconciliation in which what had gone before was not fully cleared up. Early in my life and then later again and again I was perplexed by people’s rigid inaccessibility and their failure to listen to reasons, their disregard of facts, their indifference which prohibited discussion, their defensive attitude which kept you at a distance and at the decisive moment buried any possibility of a close approach, and finally their shamelessness, that bares its own soul without reserve, as though no one were present. When ready assent occurred I remained unsatisfied, because it was not based on true insight but on yielding to persuasion; because it was the consequence of friendly cooperation, not a meeting of two selves. True, I knew the glory of friendship (in common studies, in the cordial atmosphere of home or countryside). But then came the moments of strangeness, as if human beings lived in different worlds. Steadily the consciousness of loneliness grew upon me in my youth, yet nothing seemed more pernicious to me than loneliness, especially the loneliness in the midst of social intercourse that deceives itself in a multitude of friendships. No urge seemed stronger to me than that for communication with others. If the never-completed movement of communication succeeds with but a single human being, everything is achieved. It is a criterion of this success that there be a readiness to communicate with every human being encountered and that grief is felt whenever communication fails. Not merely an exchange of words, nor friendliness and sociability, but only the constant urge towards total revelation

V roce 1935 uzavřela Anglie prostřednictvím Ribbentropa s Hitlerem námořní pakt. To pro nás znamenalo: Anglie vydává německý národ na pospas Hitlerovi, jen když si s ním tak může udržet mír. Jsme jim lhostejní. Nepřijali ještě evropskou odpovědnost. Nejenže přihlížejí, jak zde vyrůstá zlo, ale dohadují se s ním. Nechají Němce utonout v teroristickém vojenském státě. Jejich noviny sice nacistům lají, ale oni nedělají nic. My v Německu jsme bezmocní. Mohli by ještě – nyní snad bez nadměrných obětí – u nás obnovit svobodu. Nečiní to. Bude to mít důsledky i pro ně a bude je to stát daleko větší oběti.