“How could anything originate out of its opposite?Truth from error, for instance?Or the will to truth from the will to deception?Or selfless action from self-interest?Or the pure, sun-bright gaze of wisdom from a covetous leer? Such origins are impossible,and people who dream about such thingsare fools – at best. Things of the highest valuemust…
Supposing truth is a woman-what then? Is there not reason to suspect that all philosophers, in so far as they were dogmatists, have known very little about women? That if their aim was to charm a female, they have been especially inept and inapt in making advances to truth with such awful seriousness and…
I, the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus: and can I, at last, start to give you, my friends, a small taste of this philosophy, as far as I am permitted? In undertones, which would be best, since it concerns many things that are secret, new, foreign, strange, uncanny. Even the fact…
There is a way of asking for our reasons which makes us forget our best reasons but awakens in us a defiance of and a repugnance for reasons in general -a way of asking which makes us very stupid and a typical trick of tyrannical people! The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by…
The strongest knowledge (that of the unfreedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: For it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity. Human, All Too Human by Nietzsche, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, aphorism 50 I entertain many opinions. The most durable opinion that possesses me lately…
In an exchange, the only just and honest course would be for either party to demand only so much as he considers his commodity to be worth, allowance being made for trouble in acquisition, scarcity, time spent and so forth, besides the subjective value. As soon as you make your price bear a relation…
Living in the midst of this jumble of little lanes, needs, and voices gives me a melancholy happiness: how much enjoyment, impatience, and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light every moment! And yet silence will soon ascend on all these noisy, living, life-thirsty people. How his shadow stands…
Did you ever say Yes to one joy? Oh my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love; If ever you wanted one moment twice, if ever you said: ‘You please me happiness, instant, moment!’ Then you wanted everything to…
You want, if possible (and no “if possible” is crazier) to abolish suffering. And us? – it looks as though we would prefer it to be heightened and made even worse than it has ever been!… The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – don’t you know that this discipline has been the sole…
A throw that you made had failed. But what of that, you dice-throwers! You have not learnedto play and mock as a man ought to play and mock.Are we not always seated at a great tablefor play and mockery? And if great things you attemptedhave turned out failures,does that mean that you yourselves are…
