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The Press.—If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place;—what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?

The Press.—If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place;—what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?

Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Friedrich Nietzsche
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
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Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
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Recorded source
Human, All-Too-Human, Part 2 (1913 English edition) (1913 AD)

Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions, complete printed aphorism 321; Paul V. Cohn translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1913

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

The voice behind the words.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Photographic portrait, 1882

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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