quote · Source-linked selection
The Most Personal Questions of Truth.—What am I really doing, and what do I mean by doing it? That is the question of truth which is not taught under our present system of education, and consequently not asked, because there is no time for it. On the other hand, we have always time and inclination for talking nonsense with children, rather than telling them the truth; for flattering women who will later on be mothers, rather than telling them the truth; and for speaking with young men about their future and their pleasures, rather than about the truth! But what, after all, are seventy years!—Time passes, and they soon come to an end; it matters as little to us as it does to the wave to know how and whither it is rolling! No, it might even be wisdom not to know it. “Agreed; but it shows a want of pride not even to inquire into the matter; our culture does not tend to make people proud.” “So much the better!” “Is it really?”
The Most Personal Questions of Truth.—What am I really doing, and what do I mean by doing it? That is the question of truth which is not taught under our present system of education, and consequently not asked, because there is no time for it. On the other hand, we have always time and inclination for talking nonsense with children, rather than telling them the truth; for flattering women who will later on be mothers, rather than telling them the truth; and for speaking with young men about their future and their pleasures, rather than about the truth! But what, after all, are seventy years!—Time passes, and they soon come to an end; it matters as little to us as it does to the wave to know how and whither it is rolling! No, it might even be wisdom not to know it. “Agreed; but it shows a want of pride not even to inquire into the matter; our culture does not tend to make people proud.” “So much the better!” “Is it really?”
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
- The Dawn of Day (1911 English edition) (1911 AD)
The Dawn of Day, complete printed unit 196; John McFarland Kennedy translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1911
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
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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