+ Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a science without assumptions; the very notion of such a science is unthinkable, absurd. A philosophy, a “faith” is always needed to give science a direction, a meaning, a limit, a raison d’etre. by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ I wish to refer the reader here to the famous story of King Vishvamitra, who, after millennia of self-torture, acquired such a sense of power and confidence in himself that he undertook to build a new heaven. Here we have a majestic parable of the most ancient as well as the most modern philosopher’s development. Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell. by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ It is clear: these philosophers are by no means unprejudiced witnesses and judges of the value of the ascetic ideal. They think only of themselves; what are saints to them? by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ Like every good thing on earth, justice ends by suspending itself. by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ What makes people rebel against suffering is not really suffering itself but the senselessness of suffering… In order to negate and dispose of the possibility of any secret, unwitnessed suffering, early man had to invent gods and a whole apparatus of intermediate spirits, invisible beings who could also see in the dark, and who could not readily let pass any interesting spectacle of suffering. Such were the inventions with which life, in those days, performed its perennial trick of justifying itself. by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ What an enormous price man had to pay for reason, seriousness, control over his emotions - those grand human prerogatives and cultural showpieces! How much blood and horror lies behind all “good things”! by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ Together with the fear of man we have also lost the love of man, reverence for man, confidence in man, indeed the will to man. by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ God knows it is possible to endure all kinds of misery - vile weather, sickness, trouble, isolation. All this can be coped with… There will always be moments of re-emergence into the light, when one tastes the golden hour of victory and once again stands foursquare, unshakeable, ready to face even harder things, like a bowstring taut against new perils. But, you divine patronneses - if there are any such in the realm beyond good and evil - grant me now and again the sight of something perfect, wholly achieved, happy, magnificently triumphant, something still capable of inspiring fear! Of a man who will justify the existence of mankind, for whose sake one may continue to believe in mankind! by: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ Lightheartedness, or to use my own phrase, a “gay science” is the reward of a long, courageous, painstaking, inward seriousness, which to be sure is not within every man’s compass. by:

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

+ What if the “good” man represents not merely a retrogression but even a danger, a temptation, a narcotic drug enabling the present to live at the expense of the future? More comfortable, less hazardous, perhaps, but also baser, more petty - so that morality itself would be responsible for man, as a species, failing to reach the peak of magnificence of which he is capable? What if morality should turn out to be the danger of dangers? by:

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals