Friedrich Nietzsche

“ What is it we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example. ”

“ In our civilised world we seldom hear of any but the bloodless, trembling criminal, overwhelmed by the curse and contempt of society, doubting even himself, and always belittling and belying his deeds a misbegotten sort of criminal; that is why we are opposed to the idea that all great men have been criminals (only in the grand style, and neither petty nor pitiful) , that crime must be inherent in greatness (this at any rate is the unanimous verdict of all those students of human nature who have sounded the deepest waters of great souls) . ”

“ German philosophy, as a whole, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to mention the greatest, is the most out-and-out form of romanticism and home-sickness that has ever yet existed: it is a yearning for the best that has ever been known on earth. One is at home nowhere; that which is ultimately yearned after is a place where one can somehow feel at home; because one has been at home there before, and that place is the Greek world! ”

“ At present, and probably for some time to come, one will seek such colossally creative men, such really great men, as I understand them, in vain: they will be lacking, until, after many disappointments, we are forced to begin to understand why it is they are lacking, and that nothing bars with greater hostility their rise and development, at present and for some time to come, than that which is now called the morality in Europe. Just as if there were no other kind of morality, and could be no other kind, than the one we have already characterised as herd-morality. ”

“ I test the power of a will according to the amount of resistance it can offer and the amount of pain and torture it can endure and know how to turn to its own advantage; I do not point to the evil and pain of existence with the finger of reproach, but rather entertain the hope that life may one day be more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been. ”

“ Here is a little ideal that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one s life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality; half-artist, half-bird, half- metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges it, after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of one s toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by sorrow for sorrow preserves the happy man ”

“ It is a comfort to me to know that over the smoke and filth of human baseness there is a higher and brighter mankind, which, judging from their number, must be a small race (for everything that is in any way distinguished is ipso facto rare) . A man does not belong to this race because he happens to be more gifted, more virtuous, more heroic, or more loving than the men below, but because he is colder, brighter, more far-sighted, and more lonely; because he endures, prefers, and even insists upon, loneliness as the joy, the privilege, yea, even the condition of existence ”

“ The fact that in our society the criminal happens to be a badly nourished and stunted animal is simply a condemnation of our system. In the days of the Renaissance the criminal was a flourishing specimen of humanity, and acquired his own virtue for himself. Virtue in the sense of the Renaissance that is to say, virtu; free from moralic acid. It is only those whom we do not despise that we are able to elevate. Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime. ”

“ This future is already proclaimed by a hundred different omens; as a destiny it announces its advent everywhere for this music of to-morrow all ears are already pricked. The whole of our culture in Europe has long been writhing in an agony of suspense which increases from decade to decade as if in expectation of a catastrophe: restless, violent, helter-skelter, like a torrent that will reach its borne, and refuses to reflect yea, that even dreads reflection. ”

“ Does this belief in the common fancies of men really alter mankind? Or is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an expression in itself of unknown changes? Are there really such things as will, purposes, thoughts, values? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no more than miragel Even when values seem to determine the actions of a man, they are, as a matter of fact, doing something quite different! ”

“ All valuations are only the results of, and the narrow points of view in serving, this one will: valuing in itself is nothing save this, will to power. To criticize existence from the standpoint of any one of these values is utter nonsense and error. Even supposing that a process of annihilation follows from such a value, even so this process is in the service of this will. The valuation of existence itself! But existence is this valuing itself! ”

“ They may be a little turbid, and savor somewhat of Pessimism, but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying, stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes are. They live at the expense of those who have intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a disinterested fashion, without taking too much petty thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth prodigally. ”

“ To what extent is it desirable that man should be more virtuous, or more intelligent, or happier? Granting that nobody yet knows the " wherefore? " of mankind, all such desiderata have no sense whatever; and if one aspires to one of them who knows? perhaps one is frustrating the other. Is an increase of virtue compatible with an increase of intelligence and insight? Dubito: only too often shall I have occasion to show that the reverse is true. Has virtue, as an end, in the strict sense of the word, not always been opposed to happiness hitherto? ”

“ All methods, all the hypotheses on which the science of our day depends, were treated with the profoundest contempt for centuries: on their account a man used to be banished from the society of respectable people he was held to be an "enemy of God" a reviler of the highest ideal, a madman. We had the whole pathos of mankind against us, our notion of what "truth" ought to be, of what the service of truth ought to be, our objectivity, our method, our calm, cautious and distrustful manner were altogether despicable. ”

“ What I do not at all like in Jesus of Nazareth and His Apostle Paul, is that they stuffed so much into the heads of paltry people, as if their modest virtues were worth so much ado. We have had to pay dearly for it all; for they brought the most valuable qualities of both virtue and man into ill repute; they set the guilty conscience and the self-respect of noble souls at loggerheads, and they led the braver, more magnanimous, more daring, and more excessive tendencies of strong souls astray even to self-destruction. ”

“ My thoughts are not concerned with the degree of freedom which should be granted to the one or to the other or to all, but with the degree of power which the one or the other should exercise over his neighbour or over all; and more especially with the question to what extent a sacrifice of freedom, or even enslavement, may afford the basis for the cultivation of a superior type. In plain words: how could one sacrifice the development of mankind in order to assist a higher species than man to come into being. ”

“ Our attitude to politics is more natural: we see problems of power, of the quantum of power, against another quantum. We do not believe in a right that does not proceed from a power which is able to uphold it. We regard all rights as conquests. Our valuation of great men and things is more natural: we regard passion as a privilege; we can conceive of nothing great which does not involve a great crime; all greatness is associated in our minds with a certain standing-beyond-the-pale in morality. ”

“ Take the case of Eugen Duhring, for instance, a really clever and well-informed scholar, but a man who betrays with almost every word he says that he has a miser ably small soul, and that he is horribly tormented by narrow envious feelings; moreover, that it is no mighty overflowing, benevolent, and spendthrift spirit that drives him on, but only the spirit of ambition! But to be ambitious in such an age as this is much more unworthy of a philosopher than ever it was: today, when it is the mob that rules, when it is the mob that dispenses the honors. ”

“ There is a slavish love which subordinates itself and gives itself away which idealises and deceives itself; there is a divine species of love which despises and loves at the same time, and which remodels and elevates the thing it loves. The object is to attain that enormous energy of greatness which can model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which can yet avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before. ”

“ As a great educator one ought in- i exorably to thrash a race of such blissful creatures into unhappiness. The danger of belittlement and of a slackening of powers follows immediately I am opposed to happiness a la Spinoza or a la Epicurus, and to all the relaxation of contemplative states. But when virtue is the means to such happiness, well then, one must master even virtue. ”

“ To what extent is the self-destruction of morality still a sign of its own strength? We Europeans have within us the blood of those who were ready to die for their faith; we have taken morality frightfully seriously, and there is nothing which we have not, at one time, sacrificed to it. On the other hand, our intellectual subtlety has been reached essentially through the vivisection of our consciences. ”

“ Morality may be regarded as the illusion of a species, fostered with the view of urging the individual to sacrifice himself to the future, and seemingly granting him such a very great value, that with that self-consciousness he may tyrannise over, and constrain, other sides of his nature, and find it difficult to be pleased with himself. We ought to be most profoundly thankful for what morality has done hitherto: but now it is no more than a burden which may prove fatal. Morality itself in the form of honesty urges us to deny moralfty. ”

“ We flee thither where Nature moves our senses and our imagination, where we have nothing to love, where we are not reminded of the moral semblances and delicacies of this northern nature; and the same applies to the arts. We prefer that which no longer reminds us of good and evil. Our moral sensibility and tender ness seem to be relieved in the heart of terrible and happy Nature, in the fatalism of the senses and forces. ”

“ Art thou a man who has the instincts of a warrior in thy blood? If this be so, another question must be put. Do thy instincts impel thee to attack or to defend? The rest of mankind, all those whose instincts are not warlike, desire peace, concord, " freedom," " equal rights ": these things are but names and steps for one and the same thing. Such men only wish to go where it is not necessary for them to defend themselves, such men become discon tented with themselves when they are obliged to offer resistance: they would fain create circum stances in which war is no longer necessary. ”

“ What is the difference between true and false belief? What is knowledge? He "knows" it, that is heavenly! Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience! It is therefore independent of experience, of all experience! The view which comes quite a priori, and therefore independent of all experience, merely out of reason, is " pure knowledge "! " The principles of logic, the principle of identity and of contradiction, are examples of pure know ledge, because they precede all experience." ”

“ What a terrible glow of false coloring here floods the meanest virtues as though they were the reflection of divine qualities! The natural purpose and utility of every virtue is systematically hushed up it can only be valuable in the light of a divine command or model, or in the light of the good which belongs to a beyond or a spiritual world. ”

“ We are able to endure long enmities: we lack the power of easy reconciliations. We have a loathing of demagogism, of en lightenment, of amiability, and plebeian familiarity. We collect precious things, the needs of higher and fastidious souls; we wish to possess nothing in common. We want to have our own books, our own landscapes. We protest against evil and fine experiences, and take care not to generalise too quickly. The individual case: how ironically we regard it when it has the bad taste to put on the airs of a rule! ”

“ While reading the New Testament a man should have his small fund of intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly at hand. People of the lowest origin, partly mob, out casts not only from good society, but also from respectable society; grown away from the atmosphere of culture, and free from discipline; ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a word the Jews: an instinctively crafty people, able to create an advantage, a means of seduction out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition, even out of ignorance itself. ”

“ What a morality or book of law creates: that deep instinct which renders automatism and perfection possible in life and in work. But now we have reached the opposite point; yes, we wanted to reach it the most extreme consciousness, through introspection on the part of man and of history: and thus we are practically most distant from perfection in being, doing, and willing: our desires even our will to knowledge shows how prodigiously decadent we are. We are striving after the very reverse of what strong races and strong natures will have understanding is an end. ”

“ The more lofty philosophical man who is sur rounded by loneliness, not because he wishes to be alone, but because he is what he is, and cannot find his equal: what a number of dangers and torments are reserved for him, precisely at the present time, when we have lost our belief in the order of rank, and consequently no longer know how to under stand or honor this isolation! Formerly the sage almost sanctified himself in the consciences of the mob by going aside in this way; today the anchor ite sees himself as though enveloped in a cloud of gloomy doubt and suspicions. ”

“ Hegel's way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to deify the All and Life, in order to find both peace and happiness in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason everywhere in the presence of reason man may be submissive and resigned. In Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved. ”

“ How dare we blink the fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent movement? that the German Reformation was a recrudescence of Christian barbarism? that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organization of society on a large scale? . . . Man is not an example of progress as compared with animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman is a more successful type that is to say, richer in sustaining power than the European. ”

“ Supposing our common comprehension of the universe were a misunderstanding, would it be possible to conceive of a form of perfection, within the limits of which even such a misunderstanding as this could be sanctioned? The concept of a new form of perfection: that which does not correspond to our logic, to our " beauty," to our " good," to our " truth," might be perfect in a higher sense even than our ideal is. ”

“ The principle of love comes from the small community of Jewish people: a very passionate soul glows here, beneath the ashes of humility and wretchedness: it is neither Greek, Indian, nor German. The song in praise of love which Paul wrote is not Christian; it is the Jewish flare of that eternal flame which is Semitic. If Christianity has done anything essentially new in a psychological sense, it is this, that it has increased the temperature of the soul among those cooler and more noble races who were at one time at the head of affairs ”

“ When a criminal commits but one crime against a particular person, it does not alter the fact that all his instincts urge him to make a stand against the whole social system. His isolated act is merely a symptom. The idea of punishment ought to be reduced to the concept of the suppression of revolt, a weapon against the vanquished (by means of long or short terms of imprisonment) . But punish ment should not be associated in any way with contempt. A criminal is at all events a man who has set his life, his honor, his freedom at stake; he is therefore a man of courage. ”

“ Is one in need of dignity, or can one play the clown? Is one in search of resistance, or is one evading it? Is one imperfect owing to one s precocity or to one s tardiness? Is it one s nature to say yea, or no, or is one a peacock s tail of garish parts? Is one proud enough not to feel ashamed even of one s vanity? Is one still able to feel a bite of conscience (this species is becoming rare; formerly conscience had to bite too often: it is as if it now no longer had enough teeth to do so) ? ”

“ A virtuous man is of a lower species because, in the first place, he has no " personality," but acquires his value by conforming with a certain human scheme which has been once and for ever fixed. He has no independent value: he may be compared; he has his equals, he must not be an individual. Reckoning up the qualities of the good man, why is it they appear pleasant to us? Because they urge us neither to war, to mistrust, to caution, to the accumulating of forces, nor to severity: our laziness, our good nature, and our levity, have a good time. ”

“ According to this artificial liberation of the ego and its trans ference to the realm of the absolute, people thought that they had arrived at an antithesis in values which seemed quite irrefutable the single ego and the vast non-ego. It seemed obvious that the value of the individual ego could only exist in conjunction with the vast non-ego, more particularly in the sense of being subject to it and existing only for its sake. Here, of course, the gregarious instinct determined the direction of thought: nothing is more opposed to this instinct than the sovereignty of the individual. ”