Quote #131

People used to believe in 'the soul' as they believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: people said that 'I' was a condition and 'think' was a predicate and conditioned - thinking is an activity and a subject must be thought of as its cause. Now, with admirable tenacity and cunning, people are wondering whether they can get out of this net - wondering whether the reverse might be true: that 'think' is the condition and 'I' is conditioned, in which case 'I' would be a synthesis that only gets produced through thought itself.

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

  1. Independence is an issue that concerns very few people: - it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be i…
  2. 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…
  3. Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a…
  4. I did that,' says my memory. 'I could not have done that,' says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually - the memory yields.
  5. So you want to live 'according to nature?' Oh, you noble Stoics, what a fraud is in this phrase! Imagine something like nature, profligate …
  6. One has only seen little of life, if one hasn't also seen the hand that mercifully - kills.
  7. It is some basic certainty which the noble soul has about itself, something which does not allow itself to be sought out or found or perhap…
  8. The sage as astronomer. - If you still experience the stars as something 'over you,' you still don't have the eyes of a knower.

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