Q0116

Arthur Schopenhauer

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
Thinker Arthur Schopenhauer
School Voluntarism
Source Parerga und Paralipomena (on reading)
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Parerga und Paralipomena (on reading), within the tradition of Voluntarism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Arthur Schopenhauer's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Arthur Schopenhauer. (n.d.). Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0116

MLA: Arthur Schopenhauer. “Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0116.

Chicago: Arthur Schopenhauer. “Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0116.

Same thinker

More from Arthur Schopenhauer

  1. The world is my representation.
  2. Compassion is the basis of morality.
  3. Solitude is the lot of all outstanding minds.
  4. All life is suffering.
  5. What a person is contributes more to his happiness than what he has.

All quotations by Arthur Schopenhauer

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme