Friedrich Nietzsche Ice Quotations

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots KNEW!

Every word is a prejudice.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

Triumph depends on a roll of Fate's dice; the ultimate prize is a place in Heaven.

The greatest giver of alms is cowardice.

But anyone who has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and got something in return perhaps something for something of himself - that he gave up in order to have more here or at least to feel that he has "more".

Kindliness, friendliness, the courtesy of the heart, are ever-flowing streams of non egoistic impulses, and have given far more powerful assistance to culture than even those much more famous demonstrations which are called pity, mercy, and self-sacrifice.

I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.

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 their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally, what was left to be sacrificed? Didn't people have to sacrifice god himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?

All words are prejudices.

Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim toall his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functionsextends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.

Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.

Someone said: "I have been prejudiced against myself from my earliest childhood: hence I find some truth in all blame and some stupidity in all praise. I generally estimate praise too poorly and blame too highly.

Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else seems without value to her

About sacrifice and the offering of sacrifices, sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on: but they have never been allowed to have their say.

What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak : Christianity.

Objectivity and justice have nothing to do with one another.

The doctrine of equality! ... But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice ... "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".

When I seek another word for 'music', I never find any other word than 'Venice'

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved

. . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!

Sometimes in conversation the sound of our own voice distracts us and misleads us into making assertions that in no way express our true opinions.

He who strays from the customary becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who keeps to the customary becomes its slave. He iscondemned to perish in either case.

Few serve truth in truth because only few have the pure will to be just, and of those again very few have the strength to be just.

Those with very loud voices in their throats are nearly incapable of thinking subtle thoughts.

Parasitism is the only practice of the church; with its ideal of anaemia, its holiness, draining all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself.

Knapsack of the Metaphysicians.- Those who boast so mightily of the scientificality of their metaphysics should receive no answer; it is enough to pluck at the bundle which, with a certain degree of embarrassment, they keep concealed behind their back; if one succeeds in opening it, the products of that scientificality come to light, attended by their blushes: a dear little Lord God, a nice little immortality, perhaps a certain quantity of spiritualism, and in any event a whole tangled heap of 'wretched poor sinner' and Pharisee arrogance.

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.

There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day to my birth; my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing.

Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Could it be that psychology is ? a vice?

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

Speaking of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us.

We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from the earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people.

The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death.

If we make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause, as martyrs do for the sake of our church : it is a sacrifice to our longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power.

There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

the voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

When we have a great goal we are superior even to justice, not merely to our deeds and our judges.

We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"--and we give it.

When there is a choice about it, a great sacrifice is preferable to a small sacrifice, because we compensate ourselves for a greatone with self-admiration, which is not possible with a small one.

The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.

When we talk in company we lose our unique tone of voice, and this leads us to make statements which in no way correspond to our real thoughts.

I do not mean to moralise but to those who do, I would give this advice : if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and states of all all honour and worth then continue to talk about them as you have been doing!

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

For men are not equal: thus speaks justice.

The magnitude of a progress is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires.

We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgement.

Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice.

Whoever has really sacrificed anything, knows that he wanted and got something in return.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.

An artist chooses his subjects: that is the way he praises.

If the all powerful god controls satan he is an accomplice, and if he doesn't, he is not an all powerful god.

If God had wanted to become an object of love, he would first of all have had to forgo judging and justice : a judge, and even a gracious judge, is no object of love.

The belief in authority is the source of conscience; which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice of some men in man.