Georg Simmel Quotes
By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.

-Georg Simmel
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The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical deter . . . Read more

-Georg Simmel
Perhaps one has to have placed life in the center of one’s worldview and valued it as much as I have in order to know that one may not keep it, but must yield it up.

-Georg Simmel
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Nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjectiv . . . Read more

-Georg Simmel
The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

-Georg Simmel
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One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in.

-Georg Simmel
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[Nostalgic sentiments] are nothing other than the rosy illumination of a past that has been spared the shadows of the present.

-Georg Simmel
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Finally, the inner accessibility and reflectiveness of theoretical knowledge which cannot basically be withheld from anybody, as can certain emotions and volitions, has a consequence that directly offsets its practical results. In the first place, it is precisely because of their gene . . . Read more

-Georg Simmel