“All our learned teachers and educators agree that children do not know why they want what they want; but no one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze, and like children, do know not where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives and are as thorough governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. And yet it seems palpably clear to me.”
More from Johann Wolfgang Goethe
“No one knows the extent of his own powers til he has tested them.”
“General notions and great conceit are always potetial creators of shock misfortune.”
“Some people keep knocking at the wall with a hammer and imagine they are hitting the nail…”
“One can foist anything in society, except what will have consequences.”