Society and the World

Anarchists are mouthpieces of a declining stratum of society; when they work themselves into a state of righteous indignation demanding 'rights', 'justice', 'equal rights', they are just acting under the pressure of their own lack of culture, which has no way of grasping why they really suffer, or what they lack in life.

Visiting the sick' is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor's helplessness

Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept "impure", is the crime par excellence against life--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life

Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception

What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?

And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.

Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.

And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.

When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.

One is punished most for one’s virtues.

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

Genius too does nothing but learn first how to lay bricks then how to build, and continually seek for material and continually form itself around it.Every activity of man is amazingly complicated, not only that of the genius: but none is a ‘miracle.

Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.

Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.

The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.

I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength.

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?