Question 1

What is the best book to start with?

Accepted Answer

An Inquiry into the Good, Part I, chapter 1. It defines pure experience in a few pages.

Question 2

What is the most famous quote?

Accepted Answer

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Nishida Kitarō that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “To experience means to know facts just as they are, to know in accordance with facts by completely relinquishing one's own fabrications.” (An Inquiry into the Good, Part I, ch. 1, tr. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives, Paraphrase or translation).

Question 3

What is the most misquoted line?

Accepted Answer

None of the lines this library files for Nishida Kitarō is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

Question 4

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Accepted Answer

Pure experience: Before 'I see the flower' there is just the seeing. Subject and object are later abstractions.