Quotes About Philosophy

All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.

Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.

He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.

What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants?

For what reason then do the realists show themselves so unfriendly toward philosophy? Because they misunderstand their own calling and with all their might want to remain restricted instead of becoming unrestricted! Why do they hate abstractions? Because they themselves are abstract since they abstract from the perfection of themselves, from the elevation of redeeming truth!

Mensch, es spukt in deinem Kopfe!

To the believer, truths are a settled thing, a fact; to the freethinker, a thing that is still to be settled.

Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

Das Göttliche ist Gottes Sache, das Menschliche Sache "des Menschen". Meine Sache ist weder das Göttliche noch das Menschliche, ist nicht das Wahre, Gute, Rechte, Freie usw., sondern allein das Meinige, und sie ist keine allgemeine, sondern ist - einzig, wie Ich einzig bin.

Do I write out of love for human beings? No, I write because I want to give my thoughts an existence in this world; and even if I thought that these thoughts would take away your rest and peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the destruction of many generations sprouting from this seed of thought: — still I would scatter it

Dem Geiste, der nach langem Mühen die Welt los geworden ist, dem weltlosen Geiste, bleibt nach dem Verluste der Welt und des Weltlichen nichts übrig, als - der Geist und das Geistige.

Mit dem Ideal der absoluten Freiheit wird dasselbe Unwesen getrieben wie mit allem Absoluten.

Who is this person that you call "All"?—It is "society"!—But is it corporeal, then?—We are its body!—You? Why, you are not a body yourselves;—you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the "nation" of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body only semblance.

The person is repulsive to it because of being "egoistic," because of not being that abstraction, Man.

Aus fixen Ideen entstehen die Verbrechen.

Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with "religious and orthodox philosophy", "constitutional monarchy", "the Christian state", "freedom with certain limits", or in a figure, to the hero fetters to a sick bed.

It is entirely correct and completely in order to say, "You can't do anything with philosophy." The only mistake is to believe that with this, the judgment concerning philosophy is at an end. For a little epilogue arises in the form of a counter-question: even if we can't do anything with it, may not philosophy in the end do something with us, provided that we engage ourselves with it?

Now the history of philosophy shows that religious belief which is primarily mystical may very well be compatible with a pronounced sense of reality in the field of empirical fact; it may even support it directly on account of the repudiation of dialectic doctrines. Furthermore, mysticism may indirectly even further the interests of rational conduct.

Because death is meaningless, civilised life as such is meaningless.

Tolstoi has given the simplest answer, with the words: 'Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: "What shall we do and how shall we live?"' That science does not give an answer to this is indisputable. The only question that remains is the sense in which science gives 'no' answer, and whether or not science might yet be of use to the one who puts the question correctly.

All the great religious doctrines of Asia are creations of intellectuals.

It's the intellectual who transforms the concept of the world into the problem of meaning.

The ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion.