Twilight of the Idols

“... imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts”

“I want, once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom requires moderation in knowledge as in other things.”

“The early church, as everyone knows, certainly did wage war against the intelligent.”

“The church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds. Its practice, its remedy is castration. It never inquires, “How can a desire be spiritualized, beautified, deified.” In all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation. The extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge. But to attack the passions at the roots means attacking life itself at its source. The method of the church is hostile to life.”

“Morality as it has been understood hitherto … is the instinct of degeneration itself, which converts itself into an imperative. It says “perish.” It is the death sentence of men …”

“Every healthy morality is dominated by an instinct of life… Anti-natural morality—that is, almost every morality which has so far been taught, revered and preached—turns, conversely, against the instincts of life: it is a condemnation of these instincts…”

“The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them.”

“In art, man enjoys himself as perfection.”

“The other thing I do not like to hear is the notorious “and” …”

“How does one compromise oneself today? If one is consistent. If one proceeds in a straight line. If one is not ambiguous enough to permit five conflicting interpretations. If one is genuine.”

“Plato goes further. He says with an innocence possible only for a Greek, not a “Christian,” that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens: it is only their sight that transposes the philosopher’s soul into an erotic trance, leaving it no peace until it lowers the seed of all exalted things into such beautiful soil.”

“[I praise] the unconditional will to not deceive oneself and to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” still less in “morality.””