quote · Source-linked selection
Standard for the Value of Truth.—The difficulty of climbing mountains is no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different!—we are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “the initiated,”—the difficulty in finding truth is to determine the value of truth! This insane morality originates in the idea that “truths” are really nothing more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and gymnasts of the intellect.
Standard for the Value of Truth.—The difficulty of climbing mountains is no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different!—we are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “the initiated,”—the difficulty in finding truth is to determine the value of truth! This insane morality originates in the idea that “truths” are really nothing more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and gymnasts of the intellect.
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Human, All-Too-Human, Part 2 (1913 English edition) (1913 AD)
The Wanderer and His Shadow, complete printed aphorism 4; Paul V. Cohn translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1913
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The voice behind the words.
Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.
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