On The Genealogy Of Morals Quotes
"The man in whom this inhibitory mechanism is impaired is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is something more than a comparison – he cannot ‘deal with’ anything."
"The pride in his extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fortune, has penetrated to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct."
"Blood, torment and sacrifice were necessary for man to create memory in himself; the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures (among them the sacrifice of the first-born), the most loathsome mutilations (for instance, castration), the cruellest rituals of all the religious cults."
"The ‘free’ man, the possessor of unwavering determination, unbreakable will, finds therein his standard of value; regarding the others from his perspective, he honours or despises them."
"Justice in this initial phase consists in the manifestation of goodwill among people possessing nearly equal power, who come to terms with one another, who come to an ‘understanding’ once again by means of a settlement."
"In punishing the ‘debtor’, the creditor shares in the rights of the masters."
"In a certain sense the whole of asceticism is to be ascribed to this; a few ideas must be made indelible, inescapable, unforgettable, ‘fixed’, with the object of hypnotizing the whole nervous system and intellect with these ‘fixed ideas’."
"The enormous effort connected with what I have called the ‘morality of custom’ finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate harshness, despotism, stupidity and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social constraints, was made genuinely predictable."
"Our science is still, in spite of being cool and calculating, a dupe of the tricks of language, and has never rid itself of that superstitious changeling ‘the subject’."
"The more observant will perhaps notice numerous remnants of this most ancient and thorough human delight; in Beyond Good and Evil, section 229 (and even earlier, in The Dawn, sections 18, 77, 113), I have warned of the continually growing sublimation and apotheosis of cruelty, which pervades the whole history of higher civilization."
"Men live in a community, and enjoy its advantages; men live protected, sheltered, in peace and comfort, because they have entered into pledges and obligations to the community."
"The criminal is a ‘debtor’ who not only fails to remunerate his benefactors for the advances and advantages that have been granted to him, but even sets out to attack his benefactor."
"Punishment on this plane of civilization simply follows the example of the customary treatment of an enemy, one who is despised, disarmed and conquered."
"As the penal code develops, the following characteristics become more clearly marked: attempts to appease those directly affected by the misdeed through compromise, which serves to localize and contain the disturbance."
"Justice which began with the maxim, ‘Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off,’ ends with connivance at the escape of those who cannot pay to escape."
"The active man, the aggressive, ambitious man is still a hundred paces nearer to justice than the man who merely reacts."
"Every step towards the decline of the clan, every disastrous event, every symptom of degeneration, always diminishes the fear of the founder’s spirit and weakens the notion of his sagacity, providence and potent presence."
"The most drastic and effective measure, however, to be taken by the authorities against the superior strength of animosity and vindictiveness is the establishment of law."
"A legal system, conceived of as sovereign and universal, would be a principle hostile to life, intended to destroy man, an attempt on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a hidden path to oblivion."
"The self-destruction of Justice: we know the pretty name it calls itself – Clemency! It remains, as is obvious, the privilege of the strongest."
"Punishment as a means of rendering the criminal harmless and incapable of inflicting further injury."
"Punishment as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has up to that time enjoyed."
"Punishment as a declaration of war and a weapon against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, of authority."
"The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the intellect, the mastery of the desires."
"This man of the future will free us not only from the old ideal, but also from what was bound to arise from it: great loathing, the desire for oblivion and nihilism."
"The first presupposition of this hypothesis regarding the origin of bad conscience is that the alteration was not gradual and voluntary, but as a break, a leap, a compulsion, an inevitable fate."
"The second presupposition is that the moulding of a hitherto wild and uncultivated population into a uniform one, starting as it had with an act of violence, could be accomplished only by acts of violence."
"Undoubtedly bad conscience is an illness, but it is an illness in the same sense that pregnancy is an illness."
"The appearance of the Christian God as the most powerful god ever conceived has for that very reason brought into the world the greatest feeling of indebtedness as well."
"This hidden violence upon the self, this cruelty of the artist, this desire to take oneself as a piece of difficult, refractory, anguished material and form something of it; to brand it with a will, a critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and dreadful labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is divided in two within itself."
"All good things were once bad things; every original sin has become an original virtue."
"Marriage was for a long time regarded as infringing upon the rights of the community; in former times a man had to make amends for having the audacity to claim one woman for himself."
"What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my answer – when he sees this ideal, the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an optimum of the conditions of the highest and boldest intellect."
"Every tiny step forward on earth was made at a price – that of mental and physical torture."
"This very pride, however, which makes it almost impossible for us today to have sympathy for those who lived through vast stretches of time preceding the period of ‘world history’ when ‘morality of custom’ held sway, and to consider this lapse of time as the real and decisive epoch that established the character of mankind."
"We heal ourselves afterwards; we have no doubt that being ill is instructive, even more instructive than being well – those who make us sick seem to us today even more necessary than medicine-men or ‘saviours’."
"This sort of man prefers not to be disturbed by enmity, or by friendship; he forgets or despises easily."
"A philosopher may be recognized by the fact that he shuns showy and ostentatious things – things such as fame, princes and women."
"The philosopher is cautious with his dealings with truth and more often than not has a taste for the enigmatic and the hidden."
"A certain asceticism, a hard and firm habit of renunciation, is one of the most favourable prerequisites for a supreme intellect and, consequently, for the most natural corollaries of such an intellect."
"There is no knowledge. Consequently there is a God."
"The desire for truth needed a critique – let this critique be then our own task – the value of truth is tentatively to be called in question."
"‘There is no knowledge. Consequently there is a God’; what a novel elegantia syllogismi!"
"No! This ‘modern science’ – mark this well – is now the best ally for the ascetic ideal."
"The ascetic ideal has not only ruined health and corrupted taste, there are many more things which it has corrupted."
"The ‘contemplative’ historians are a hundred times worse – I never knew anything as intensely nauseating as the ‘objective’ armchair scholar."
"‘My kingdom is not of this world’, he exclaimed, both at the beginning and at the end; did he still have the right to talk like that?"
"The ascetic ideal expresses one intention; where is the opposition, in which an opposing ideal expresses itself?"
"The belief on which our faith in science is based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief."
"The truth is just the opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory."
"Science itself now needs a justification (which is not for a minute to say that there is such a justification)."
"Science is by no means independent enough to undertake this alone; in every respect science needs an ideal of value, a capacity to create values, a force which it can serve confidently – science itself never creates values."
"The same course of development occurred in India quite independently, and is consequently of some demonstrative value."
"The ascetic priest, wherever he has assumed a position of authority, has brought about the ruin of psychological health."
"Science makes the life in the ideal free once more, while it repudiates its superficial elements."
"‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted’ – now, that was freedom of thought, that was the renunciation of truth itself."
"But what if this belief becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies – what if God Himself proved to be our oldest lie?"
"For they are dazed and unconscious men who have but one fear – regaining their consciousness."
"It is certain that from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a winning game – they are emancipated from the theologians; what luck!"
"Science serves as a narcotic: did you know that?"
"‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted’ – what a divine expedient it would be to make not ‘desiring’ but ‘knowing’ responsible for this state of affairs! …"
"Since the time of Copernicus Man seems to have fallen onto a steep slope – he rolls faster and faster away from the centre – whither?"
"A depreciation of the ascetic ideal inevitably entails a depreciation of science as well; one must always keep alert to this!"
"The ascetic priest has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one real kind of enemy which poses a threat to it: these are the comedians of this ideal – for they arouse mistrust."
"The ascetic priest has prescribed it with the utmost faith in its efficacy and indispensability – and often enough nearly collapsing when confronted with the sorrow which he caused."
"The belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is repudiated, there arises a new problem: the problem of the value of truth."
"The desire for truth as the belief in the ascetic ideal itself, even if it takes the form of its unconscious imperatives – make no mistake about it, it is the belief, I repeat, in a metaphysical value, in an intrinsic value of truth, of a character which this ideal alone can furnish."
"Unconditional, honest atheism is thus not opposed to that ideal, to the extent that it appears to be; it is rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its natural and logical consequences."
"The truth will set us free; it is the untruth which is the real danger."
"The rigorous, incisive, genuine thought survives, this ideal seems to have disappeared with the exception of the desire for truth."
"The same ideal led to the same conclusion, the decisive point being reached five hundred years before the European era, or more precisely at the time of Buddha."
"The ascetic ideal has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one real kind of enemy which poses a threat to it: these are the comedians of this ideal – for they arouse mistrust."