13 Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes on Communication

Friedrich Nietzsche quotes on communication

12. The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, 'I am rich,' when the proper designation for his condition would be 'poor.' He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.

15. We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.

26. Between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: I mean, a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue - for which I there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. 'Appearance' is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true that the essence of things 'appears' in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the hardening and congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing concerning its necessity and exclusive justification.

55. It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

80. The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

84. There is something laughable about the sight of authors who enjoy the rustling folds of long and involved sentences: they are trying to cover up their feet.

103. 'Leib bin ich und Seele'-so redet das Kind. Und warum sollte man nicht wie die Kinder reden?

112. Nicht durch Zorn, sondern durch Lachen todtet ma

114. Im Gebirge ist der nachste Weg von Gipfel zu Gipfel: aber dazu musst du lange Beine haben. Spruche sollen Gipfel sein: und Die, zu denen gesprochen wird, Grosse und Hochwuchsige.

137. One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation.

163. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book - what everyone else does not say in a whole book.

166. We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt.

208. Every word is a prejudice. (The Wanderer and his Shadow, sec. 55)