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
God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!
I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.
A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.
Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there!
A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian...
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.
People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous.
The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally, what was left to be sacrificed? Didn't people have to sacrifice god himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?
One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.
Yet for all that, there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion--religions are affairs of the rabble; I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come into contact with religious people.