Selected philosophy quotes

1. When you're dancing the mystical dance of the molecules, you're not the one who's leading.

2. There never was night that had no morn.

3. Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall, - So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

4. Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, - Outward bound.

5. Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

6. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

7. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

8. Reason gains all people by compelling none.

9. Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

10. It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.

11. In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

12. Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort.

13. Either you can subscribe to the American creed which says that God endowed us with our rights, or you can subscribe to the abortion creed which says that those rights are the consequences of our mother's will.

14. The entire universe - for one thing - only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality.

15. A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

16. Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

17. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

18. I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

19. Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

20. Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

21. To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.

22. We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

23. There is not love of life without despair about life.

24. I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

25. I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

26. What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.

27. The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

28. A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.

29. There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

30. I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.

31. But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

32. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

33. I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. 'I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.' That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.

34. I don't believe in mathematics.

35. Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

36. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

37. The most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile.

38. Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.

39. The last fact which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation, and in every way a puzzling manifestation, of the universal will to live.

40. World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.

41. For the moment being, given that we live in society, the only duty of superior men is to reduce to a minimum their participation in the tribe's life. Not to read newspapers, or read them only to know about whatever unimportant and curious is going on. / [...] The supreme honorable state for a superior man is in not knowing who is the Head of State of his country, or if he lives under a monarchy or a republic. / All his attitude must be setting his soul so that the passing of things, of events doesn't bother him. If he doesn't do it he will have to take an interest in others in order to take care of himself.

42. I never was but an isolated bon vivant, which is absurd; or a mystic bon vivant, which is an impossible thing.

43. La philosophie triomphe aisement des maux passes et des maux a venir. Mais les maux presents triomphent d'elle.

44. Christ goes deeper than I do, but I have had a wider experience.

45. There are no facts, only interpretations.

46. In Germany there is much complaining about my 'eccentricities.' But since it is not known where my center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been 'eccentric.' That I was a philologist, for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had for me - it was the most severe test of my character.

47. So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.

48. The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.

49. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself - in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity - is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see 'forms.'

50. What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him - even concerning his own body - in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.

51. Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a 'truth' of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.

52. The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The 'thing in itself' (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.' To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.

53. 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.

54. Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases - which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept 'leaf' is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.

55. We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

56. We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.

57. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a 'rational' being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.

58. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries - a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.

59. One may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind.

60. As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself.

61. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding 'truth' within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare 'look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be 'true in itself' or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man.

62. If each us had a different kind of sense perception - if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound - then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature - which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence.

63. We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions.

64. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific 'truth' with completely different kinds of 'truths' which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems.

65. Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people - the ancient Greeks, for instance - more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker.

66. Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring.

67. There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an 'overjoyed hero,' counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.

68. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption - in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch.

69. Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

70. He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

71. If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?

72. Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.

73. In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.

74. He who lives as children live - who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance - remains childlike.

75. For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.

76. Die Leugner des Zufalls. - 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.'

77. Was sagt dein Gewissen? - 'Du sollst der werden, der du bist.'

78. We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows - not even God.

79. A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions - as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

80. But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new 'things.'

81. Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.

82. To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.

83. The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

84. To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

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

86. We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way - not at all or in an interesting manner.

87. What is the seal of liberation? - No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.

88. For believe me! - the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: - it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

89. Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.

90. Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.

91. We want to be poets of our life - first of all in the smallest most everyday matters.

92. Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature - nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present - and it was we who gave and bestowed it.

93. Could one count such dilettantes and old spinsters as that mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainlander, as a genuine German? In the last analysis he probably was a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralize).

94. I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

95. We 'conserve' nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not by any means 'liberal'; we do not work for 'progress'; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place sing of the future: their song about 'equal rights,' 'a free society,' 'no more masters and no servants' has no allure for us.

96. Preparatory human beings. - I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day - the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.

97. Du grosses Gestirn! Was ware dein Gluck, wenn du nicht Die hattest, welchen du leuchtest!

98. Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe.

99. Ich sage euch: man mu? noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebaren zu konnen.

100. Kein Hirt und Eine Heerde! Jeder will das Gleiche, Jeder ist gleich: wer anders fuhlt, geht freiwillig in's Irrenhaus.