Quotes About Value

Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable

Ein Buch, das man liebt, darf man nicht leihen, sondern muss es besitzen.

One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

What makes life 'worth living'? - The awareness that there is something for which one is ready to risk one's life

The sublime man has the highest value, even when he is most delicate and fragile, because an abundance of very difficult and rare things have been bred and united in him.

Valuing is creating: hear it, you creators! Valuing itself is the treasure and jewel of all valued things.

But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially meaningless world! Suppose that one assessed the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated, put into formulas; how absurd such a 'scientific' assessment of music would be! What would one have comprehended, understood, known about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing of what is really 'music' in it!

One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior

What does Nihilism mean?—That the highest values are losing their value.

For all the value that the true, the truthful, the selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life might have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness, and lust. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of these good and revered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these wicked, seemingly opposite things—maybe even one with them in essence. Maybe!

Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little.

That the artist places a higher value on appearance than on reality constitutes no objection to this proposition. For 'appearance' here signifies reality once more, only selected, strengthened, corrected.… The tragic artist is not a pessimist – it is precisely he who affirms all that is questionable and terrible in existence, he is Dionysian…

Judgements, judgements of value concening life, for it or against it, can, in the end, never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as symptoms; in themselves such judgments are stupidities

TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.

To estimate what a type of man is worth, one must calculate the price paid for his preservation — one must know the conditions of his existence.

Honest things, like honest men, do not have to explain themselves so openly. What must first be proved is worth little.

To judge the value of life by whether we find it now unpleasant or not — can a more wild, extravagant vanity be imagined?

A rebel can be a miserable and contemptible man; but there is nothing contemptible in a revolt as such - and to be a rebel in view of contemporary society does not in itself lower the value of a man. There are even cases in which one might have to honour a rebel,because he finds something in our society against which war ought to be waged - he wakens us from our slumber.

For nothing is of greater importance than that a powerful, long-established, and irrational custom should be once again confirmed by the act of some one who is recognized as rational. In this way the proceeding is thought to be sanctioned by reason itself! All honor to your opinions! but little unconventional actions are of still greater value.

In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless.

The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world.

You love your virtue as the mother her child; but when was it heard of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

To recognize untruth as a condition of life; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.