Twilight of the Idols Quotes

“Humanity does not strive for happiness; only the English do.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“Evil people don’t have songs.”13—How is it that the Russians have songs?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“I distrust all systematizers and stay out of their way. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“Are we immoralists doing harm to virtue?—Just as little as the anarchists are harming the princes. Only since the princes have been shot at have they been sitting securely on their thrones again. Moral: one must take shots at morality.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“The Church and morality say, “A race, a people is destroyed by vice and luxury.” My reconstituted reason says: when a people is perishing, physiologically degenerating, the effects of this are vice and luxury (that is, the need for stronger and stronger, more and more frequent stimuli, the kind of stimuli that are familiar to every exhausted nature).”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“moral judgments can never be taken literally: literally, they always contain nothing but nonsense. But they are semiotically invaluable all the same: they reveal, at least to those who are in the know, the most valuable realities of cultures and inner states that did not know enough to “understand” themselves. Morality is just a sign language, just a symptomatology: you already have to know what it’s all about in order to get any use out of it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“We have invented the concept “goal”: in reality, goals are absent . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“These wisest men of all ages should be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? Tottery? Decadent? Late? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a Raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Hat man sein Warum des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem Wie. Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer tut das.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallowpates.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Morality as it has hitherto been understood- and formulated by Schopenhauer, lastly, as 'denial of the will to life' is the decadence instinct itself making an imperative out of itself: it says 'perish!' - it is the judgement of the condemned...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Nothing is beautiful, only people are beautiful: all aesthetics is based on this naïveté, this is its first truth.
Let us immediately add its second: the only thing ugly is a degenerating person, - this defines the realm of aesthetic judgment.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“All that is good is inherited: whatever is not inherited is imperfect, is a mere beginning.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“dari sekolah militer kehidupan: apa yang tidak membunuhku membuatku kuat”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“apa? kamu mencari? kamu ingin membanyakkan dirimu menjadi sepuluh, seratus kali? kamu mencari pengikut? carilah nol!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“kepuasan diri melindungi orang bahkan dari terkena pilek. pernahkah seorang perempuan yang tahu bahwa ia berpakaian pantas terkena pilek? saya asumsikan dia hampir tidak berpakaian samasekali”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Qu’est-ce qui peut seul être notre doctrine ? — Que personne ne donne à l’homme ses qualités, ni Dieu, ni la société, ni ses parents et ses ancêtres, ni lui-même (— le non-sens de l’« idée », réfuté en dernier lieu, a été enseigné, sous le nom de « liberté intelligible par Kant et peut-être déjà par Platon).Personne n’est responsable du fait que l’homme existe, qu’il est conformé de telle ou telle façon, qu’il se trouve dans telles conditions, dans tel milieu. La fatalité de son être n’est pas à séparer de la fatalité de tout ce qui fut et de tout ce qui sera. L’homme n’est pas la conséquence d’une intention propre, d’une volonté, d’un but ; avec lui on ne fait pas d’essai pour atteindre un « idéal d’humanité », un « idéal de bonheur », ou bien un « idéal de moralité », — il est absurde de vouloir faire dévier son être vers un but quelconque. Nous avons inventé l’idée de « but » : dans la réalité le « but » manque… On est nécessaire, on est un morceau de destinée, on fait partie du tout, on est dans le tout, — il n’y a rien qui pourrait juger, mesurer, comparer, condamner notre existence, car ce serait là juger, mesurer, comparer et condamner le tout…Mais il n’y a rien en dehors du tout ! — Personne ne peut plus être rendu responsable, les catégories de l’être ne peuvent plus être ramenées à une cause première, le monde n’est plus une unité, ni comme monde sensible, ni comme « esprit » : cela seul est la grande délivrance, — par là l’innocence du devenir est rétablie… L’idée de « Dieu » fut jusqu’à présent la plus grande objection contre l’existence… Nous nions Dieu, nous nions la responsabilité en Dieu : par là seulement nous sauvons le monde.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“La Culture et l’État — qu’on ne s’y trompe pas — sont antagonistes : « État civilisé », ce n’est là qu’une idée moderne. L’un vit de l’autre, l’un prospère au détriment de l’autre. Toutes les grandes époques de culture sont des époques de décadence politique : ce qui a été grand au sens de la culture a été non-politique, et même anti-politique…”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“¿Quiere esto decir que todos esos grandes sabios no sólo han sido decadentes, sino que ni siquiera han sido sabios?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, El ocaso de los ídolos o cómo se filosofa a martillazos

“After an eventful journey - it was even life-threatening because of flooding in Como, which I only reached late at night - I arrived in Turin on the afternoon of the 21st, my proven place, my residence from then on. I took the same apartment that I had in the spring, via Carlo Alberto 6, III, across from the enormous Palazzo Carignano where Vittore Emanuele was born, with a view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and the hills beyond. I went back to work without delay: only the last quarter of the work was left to be done. Great victory on 30 September; the conclusion of the Revaluation; the leisure of a god walking along the river Po. That same day, I wrote the Preface to Twilight of the Idols: I had corrected the manuscript for it in September, as my recuperation. - I never experienced an autumn like this before, I never thought anything like this could happen on earth, - a Claude Lorrain projected out to infinity, every day having the same tremendous perfection.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Mankind does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“at the age of thirty, when it comes to high culture, one is a beginner, a child.—”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“the overall aspect of life is not a state of need and hunger, but instead, wealth, bounty, even absurd squandering—where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power… One should not confuse Malthus with nature.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“Getting along with people, keeping an open house in one’s heart—that’s liberal, but nothing more than liberal. You can recognize hearts that are capable of noble hospitality by their many curtained windows and closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. But why?—Because they are waiting for guests that one does not “get along with”…”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer

“To invent fables about a world "other" than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander, detraction, and suspicion against life has gained the upper hand in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of "another," a "better" life.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Boldness is as natural an attribute of thought as thought is a natural attribute of freedom. . . . Man would still prefer to will Nothingness than not to will.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Thucydides and, maybe, Machiavelli’s prince are most closely related to me by their unconditional will to fabricate nothing and to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” and still less in “morality” . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“there are no moral facts at all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Nobody is responsible for being here in the first place, for being constituted in such and such a way, for being in these circumstances, in this environment. The fatality of our essence cannot be separated from the fatality of all that was and will be.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Reason in language- oh what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols