Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzschewas a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth15 October 1844
CityRocken, Germany
CountryGermany
Christianity is Platonism for the people.
Epicurus had rage and envy of Plato's superior style.
The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.
There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no 'Bible,' nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic - but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life - a Greek life which he repudiated - without an Aristophanes!
Socrates condemned art because he preferred philosophy and only after much internal struggle did Plato accept this judgment.
Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.
The destiny of the human race is to widen the gap separating it from the lower races of animals. Any code of morality which retains its permanence and authority after the conditions of existence which gave rise to it have changed, works against this upward progress of man.
For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways or reason.
Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?
You implanted your highest goal into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and joys.
With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.
The greatest progress that the human race has made lies in learning how to make correct inferences.
I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit I relate to you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.