Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes - Page 9

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
Friedrich Nietzsche
A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.
Friedrich Nietzsche
However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots KNEW!
Friedrich Nietzsche
It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.---
Friedrich Nietzsche
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
Friedrich Nietzsche
As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?
Friedrich Nietzsche
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The recipe for becoming a good novelist, for example is easy to give but to carry it out presupposes qualities one is accustomed to overlook when one says 'I do not have enough talent'. One has only to make a hundred or so sketches for novels, none longer than two pages but of such distinctness that every word in them is necessary; one should write down anecdotes each day until one has learned how to give them the most pregnant and effective form; one should be tireless in collecting and describing human types and characters; one should above all relate things to others and listen to others relate, keeping one's eyes and ears open for the effect produced on those present, one should travel like a landscape painter or costume designer; one should excerpt for oneself out of the individual sciences everything that will produce an artistic effect when it is well described, one should, finally, reflect on the motives of human actions, disdain no signpost to instruction about them and be a collector of these things by day and night. One should continue in this many-sided exercise some ten years: what is then created in the work­shop, however, will be fit to go out into the world. - What, however, do most people do? They begin, not with the parts, but with the whole. Per­haps they chance to strike a right note, excite attention and from then on strike worse and worse notes, for good, natural reasons.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche
All I need is a sheet of paperand something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.
Friedrich Nietzsche
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race...
Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant— which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer."Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will [ This conception of "freedom of the will" ( alias, autonomy) does not involve any belief in what Nietzsche called "the superstition of free will" in section 345 ( alias, the exemption of human actions from an otherwise universal determinism).] that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Thought of Death. It gives me a melancholy happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices: how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life- loving people! How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling companion stands behind him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an emigrant- ship: people have more than ever to say to one another, the hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the noise-so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all, all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do something to make the idea of life to us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. And so we will believe in our even a hundred times more worthy of their attention.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The final reward of the dead - to die no more
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.
Friedrich Nietzsche
O sky above me, you modest, glowing sky! O you, my happiness before sunrise! Day is coming: so let us part!
Friedrich Nietzsche
One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.
Friedrich Nietzsche
You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!
Friedrich Nietzsche
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes ("God" "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will" -- "unfree will" for that matter), and purely imaginary effects ("sin," "salvation," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary beings ("God," "spirits," "souls"); an imaginary natural science (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings -- for example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash -- , "repentance," "pangs of conscience," "temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary teleology (the "kingdom of God," "the last judgment," "eternal life"). -- This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the later at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on the meaning of "abominable" -- the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (-- the real! --), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality. . . . This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for lying his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a botched reality. . . . The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for decadence...
Friedrich Nietzsche
New struggles. -- After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries -- a colossal, horrible shadow. God is dead, but given the way people are, there may still be caves for millennia in which his shadow is displayed. -- And we -- we must still defeat his shadow as well!
Friedrich Nietzsche
Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.
Friedrich Nietzsche
...inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! ... He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Einer hat immer Unrecht: aber mit zweien beginnt die Wahrheit. Einer kann sich nicht beweisen: aber zweie kann man bereits nicht widerlegen.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value."This unconditional will to truth—what is it? Is it the will not to allow oneself to be deceived? Or is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could be interpreted in the second way, too—if only the special case "I do not want to deceive myself" is subsumed under the generalization "I do not want to deceive." But why not deceive?But why not allow oneself to be deceived?Note that the reasons for the former principle belong to an altogether different realm from those for the second. One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility; but one could object in all fairness: How is that? Is wanting not to allow oneself to be deceived really less harmful, less dangerous, less calamitous? What do you know in advance of the character of existence to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of the unconditionally mistrustful or of the unconditionally trusting?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration […]; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour […]. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist"from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".
Friedrich Nietzsche
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?
Friedrich Nietzsche
What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
Friedrich Nietzsche
No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche