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
They will tell me I talk about things I have never experienced but only dreamed--to which I might reply: it is a lovely thing to dream such dreams! And besides, our dreams are much more our experiences than we believe--we must relearn about dreams! If I have dreamed thousands of times about flying--would you not believe that when I am awake I also possess feelings and needs giving me an edge on most people--and...
When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.
On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection - most dreams are bungled - the are symbolic chains of scene and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or expectations or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed when we remember our dreams.
We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way- not at all or in an interesting manner
What we experience in dreams - assuming that we experience it often - belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it.
At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate-and immediately forget we have done so.
I am opposed to socialism because it dreams ingenuously of good, truth, beauty, and equal rights.
And so while dreams are the individual man's play with reality, the sculptor's art is (in a broader sense) the play with dreams.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at the end, for a pleasant death.
Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.
Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.