Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

A bore is a fellow talker who can change the subject to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.

What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas—and you have to work through it all.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

There is something the child sees that he does not see; something the child hears that he does not hear; and this something is the most important thing of all. Because he does not understand it, his understanding is more childish than the child's and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face, and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots.

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

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, and ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray.

Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist .

Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.

 

Little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line.

Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.

There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it .

I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, And I become the other dreamers.

They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer. They know and do not know, that acting is suffering.