654 Quotes by Swiss authors

Swiss sayings tend to speak in a low voice, with a cool clarity shaped by Alpine hush and village-square debate. Their humor is dry, multilingual, and exacting; praise is spare, duty careful, and liberty tempered by neighborly regard. Craft over spectacle, patience over haste: wisdom that moves like a sure-footed path rather than a fanfare. Modest images of stone, water, and light recur, alongside a federal mosaic of perspectives and an ethic of reliability, restraint, and quiet daring.

See the complete list of authors from Switzerland

"If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

Small: Carl Jung

"I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

Small: Carl Jung

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

Small: Carl Jung

"Power is paradoxical"

Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author

Small: Friedrich Durrenmatt

"A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder"

Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author

Small: Friedrich Durrenmatt

"There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them"

Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author

Small: Friedrich Durrenmatt

"Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true"

Elias Canetti, Author

Small: Elias Canetti

"Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided"

Paracelsus, Scientist

"Study nature, not books"

Louis Agassiz, Scientist

"The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are"

Paul Tournier, Author

"Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace"

Karl Barth, Theologian

"Our ultimate goal is extensible programming (EP). By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system"

Niklaus Wirth, Scientist

"Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk"

Leonhard Euler, Mathematician

Small: Leonhard Euler

"Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence"

Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus, Scientist

"Even in modern art, artists have used methods based on calculation, inasmuch as these elements, alongside those of a more personal and emotional nature, give balance and harmony to any work of art"

Max Bill, Architect

"Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Uncertainty is the refuge of hope"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

Small: Henri Frederic Amiel

"The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

Small: Carl Jung

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

Small: Carl Jung

"Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process"

Jean Piaget, Psychologist

"To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active"

Jean Piaget, Psychologist

"I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies"

Le Corbusier, Architect

"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams"

Elias Canetti, Author

Small: Elias Canetti

"People's fates are simplified by their names"

Elias Canetti, Author

Small: Elias Canetti

"That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart"

Karl Barth, Theologian

"Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good"

Karl Barth, Theologian

"Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another"

Ferdinand De Saussure, Educator

"Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future"

H. R. Giger, Artist

Small: H. R. Giger

"Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it"

Max Frisch, Novelist

"There is no art without Eros"

Max Frisch, Novelist

Page 2 of 17