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The collection / 680 fragments

Knowledge.

Explore passages mentioning knowledge, know. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Editorial meanings and lexical matches are discovery aids, not independent authentication of a quotation.

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01c. 1872 AD
Inevitable.—No matter what your experience may be, any one who does not feel well disposed towards you will find in this experience some pretext for disparaging you! You may undergo the greatest possible revolutions of mind and knowledge, and at length, with the melancholy smile of the convalescent, you may be able to step out into freedom and bright stillness, and yet some one will say: “This fellow looks upon his illness as an argument, and takes his impotence to be a proof of the impotence of all others—he is vain enough to fall ill that he may feel the superiority of the sufferer.” And again, if somebody were to break the chains that bound him down, and wounded himself severely in doing so, some one else would point at him mockingly and cry: “How awkward he is! there is a man who had got accustomed to his chains, and yet he is fool enough to burst them asunder!”
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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02c. 1872 AD
Seeking one's Company.—Are we then looking for too much when we seek the company of men who have grown mild, agreeable to the taste, and nutritive, like chestnuts which have been put into the fire and taken out just at the right moment? Of men who expect little from life, and prefer to accept this little as a present rather than as a merit of their own, as if it were carried to them by birds and bees? Of men who are too proud ever to feel themselves rewarded, and too serious in their passion for knowledge and honesty to have time for or pleasure in fame? Such men we should call philosophers; but they themselves will always find some more modest designation.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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03c. 1872 AD
Satiated with Mankind.— A. Seek for knowledge! Yes! but always as a man! What? must I always be a spectator of the same comedy, and always play a part in the same comedy, without ever being able to observe things with other eyes than those? and yet there may be countless types of beings whose organs are better adapted for knowledge than ours! At the end of all their searching for knowledge what will men at length come to know? Their organs! which perhaps is as much as to say: the impossibility of knowledge! misery and disgust! B. This is a bad attack you have—reason is attacking you! to-morrow, however, you will again be in the midst of knowledge, and hence of irrationality—that is to say, delighted about all that is human. Let us go to the sea!
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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04c. 1872 AD
Going our own Way.—When we take the decisive step, and make up our minds to follow our own path, a secret is suddenly revealed to us: it is clear that all those who had hitherto been friendly to us and on intimate terms with us judged themselves to be superior to us, and are offended now. The best among them are indulgent, and are content to wait patiently until we once more find the “right path”—they know it, apparently. Others make fun of us, and pretend that we have been seized with a temporary attack of mild insanity, or spitefully point out some seducer. The more malicious say we are vain fools, and do their best to blacken our motives; while the worst of all see in us their greatest enemy, some one who is thirsting for revenge after many years of dependence,—and are afraid of us. What, then, are we to do? My own opinion is that we should begin our sovereignty by promising to all our acquaintances in advance a whole year's amnesty for sins of every kind.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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07c. 1872 AD
Mortal Souls.—Where knowledge is concerned perhaps the most useful conquest that has ever been made is the abandonment of the belief in the immortality of the soul. Humanity is henceforth at liberty to wait: men need no longer be in a hurry to swallow badly-tested ideas as they had to do in former times. For in those times the salvation of this poor “immortal soul” depended upon the extent of the knowledge which could be acquired in the course of a short existence: decisions had to be reached from one day to another, and “knowledge” was a matter of dreadful importance! Now we have acquired good courage for errors, experiments, and the provisional acceptance of ideas—all this is not so very important!—and for this very reason individuals and whole races may now face tasks so vast in extent that in former years they would have looked like madness, and defiance of heaven and hell. Now we have the right to experiment upon ourselves! Yes, men have the right to do so! the greatest sacrifices have not yet been offered up to knowledge—nay, in earlier periods it would have been sacrilege, and a sacrifice of our eternal salvation, even to surmise such ideas as now precede our actions.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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08c. 1872 AD
Reconciliation.—Should it then be the task of philosophy to reconcile what the child has learnt with what the man has come to recognise? Should philosophy be the task of young men because they stand midway between child and man and possess intermediate necessities? It would almost appear to be so if you consider at what ages of their life philosophers are now in the habit of setting forth their conceptions: at a time when it is too late for faith and too early for knowledge.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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09c. 1872 AD
Practical People.—We thinkers have the right of deciding good taste in all things, and if necessary of decreeing it. The practical people finally receive it from us: their dependence upon us is incredibly great, and is one of the most ridiculous spectacles in the world, little though they themselves know it and however proudly they like to carp at us unpractical people. Nay, they would even go so far as to belittle their practical life if we should show a tendency to despise it—whereto at times we might be urged on by a slightly vindictive feeling.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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10c. 1872 AD
Against the Tyranny of Truth.—Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions as truth, we should nevertheless not wish them alone to exist. I cannot see why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth: it is sufficient for me to know that it is a great power. Truth, however, must meet with opposition and be able to fight, and we must be able to rest from it at times in falsehood—otherwise truth will grow tiresome, powerless, and insipid, and will render us equally so.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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13c. 1872 AD
“Love Equalises.”—Love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle)! This phenomenon is a simple matter if one of the two permits himself or herself to be loved, and does not deem it necessary to feign, but leaves this to the other. No drama, however, could offer a more intricate and confused instance than when both persons are passionately in love with one another; for in this case both are anxious to surrender and to endeavour to conform to the other, and finally they are both at a loss to know what to imitate and what to feign. The beautiful madness of this spectacle is too good for this world, and too subtle for human eyes.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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15c. 1872 AD
What we are Free to do.—We can act as the gardeners of our impulses, and—which few people know—we may cultivate the seeds of anger, pity, vanity, or excessive brooding, and make these things fecund and productive, just as we can train a beautiful plant to grow along trellis-work. We may do this with the good or bad taste of a gardener, and as it were, in the French, English, Dutch, or Chinese style. We may let nature take its own course, only trimming and embellishing a little here and there; and finally, without any knowledge or consideration, we may even allow the plants to spring up in accordance with their own natural growth and limitations, and fight out their battle among themselves,—nay, we can even take delight in such chaos, though we may possibly have a hard time with it! All this is at our option: but how many know that it is? Do not the majority of people believe in themselves as complete and perfect facts? and have not the great philosophers set their seal on this prejudice through their doctrine of the unchangeability of character?
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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16c. 1872 AD
The Settled and the Free.—It is only in the Underworld that we catch a glimpse of that gloomy background of all that bliss of adventure which forms an everlasting halo around Ulysses and his like, rivalling the eternal phosphorescence of the sea,—that background which we can never forget: the mother of Ulysses died of grief and yearning for her child. The one is driven on from place to place, and the heart of the other, the tender stay-at-home friend, breaks through it—so it always is. Affliction breaks the hearts of those who live to see that those whom they love best are deserting their former views and faith,—it is a tragedy brought about by the free spirits,—a tragedy which, indeed, occasionally comes to their own knowledge. Then, perhaps, they too, like Ulysses, will be forced to descend among the dead to get rid of their sorrow and to relieve their affliction.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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17c. 1872 AD
Dignity and Ignorance.—Wherever we understand we become amiable, happy, and ingenious; and when we have learnt enough, and have trained our eyes and ears, our souls show greater plasticity and charm. We understand so little, however, and are so insufficiently informed, that it rarely happens that we seize upon a thing and make ourselves lovable at the same time,—on the contrary we pass through cities, nature, and history with stiffness and indifference, at the same time taking a pride in our stiff and indifferent attitude, as if it were simply due to superiority. Thus our ignorance and our mediocre desire for knowledge understand quite well how to assume a mask of dignity and character.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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19c. 1872 AD
Out of the Distance.—This mountain makes the whole district which it dominates charming in every way, and full of significance. After we have said this to ourselves for the hundredth time, we are so irrationally and so gratefully disposed towards it, as the giver of this charm, that we fancy it must itself be the most charming thing in the district—and so we climb it, and are undeceived. All of a sudden, both it and the landscape around us and under us, are as it were disenchanted; we had forgotten that many a greatness, like many a goodness, wants only to be seen at a certain distance, and entirely from below, not from above,—it is thus only that it operates. Perhaps you know men in your neighbourhood who can only look at themselves from a certain distance to find themselves at all endurable, or attractive and enlivening; they are to be dissuaded from self-knowledge.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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20c. 1872 AD
Not Pre-ordained to Knowledge.—There is a pur-blind humility not at all rare, and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge. It is this in fact: the moment a man of this kind perceives anything striking, he turns as it were on his heel and says to himself: "You have deceived yourself! Where have your wits been! This cannot be the truth!"—and then, instead of looking at it and listening to it with more attention, he runs out of the way of the striking object as if intimidated, and seeks to get it out of his head as quickly as possible. For his fundamental rule runs thus: "I want to see nothing that contradicts the usual opinion concerning things! Am I created for the purpose of discovering new truths? There are already too many of the old ones."
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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21c. 1872 AD
Owing to three Errors.—Science has been furthered during recent centuries, partly because it was hoped that God's goodness and wisdom would be best understood therewith and thereby—the principal motive in the soul of great Englishmen (like Newton); partly because the absolute utility of knowledge was believed in, and especially the most intimate connection of morality, knowledge, and happiness—the principal motive in the soul of great Frenchmen (like Voltaire); and partly because it was thought that in science there was something unselfish, harmless, self-sufficing, lovable, and truly innocent to be had, in which the evil human impulses did not at all participate—the principal motive in the soul of Spinoza, who felt himself divine, as a knowing being:—it is consequently owing to three errors that science has been furthered.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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22c. 1872 AD
The Believed Motive.—However important it may be to know the motives according to which mankind has really acted hitherto, perhaps the belief in this or that motive, and therefore that which mankind has assumed and imagined to be the actual mainspring of its activity hitherto, is something still more essential for the thinker to know. For the internal happiness and misery of men have always come to them through their belief in this or that motive,—not however, through that which was actually the motive! All about the latter has an interest of secondary rank.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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24c. 1872 AD
Will and Willingness.—Some one brought a youth to a wise man, and said, "See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!" The wise man shook his head and smiled. "It is men," he called out, "who corrupt women; and everything that women lack should be atoned for and improved in men—for man creates for himself the ideal of woman, and woman moulds herself according to this ideal."—"You are too tender-hearted towards women," said one of the bystanders, "you do not know them!" The wise man answered: "Man's attribute is will, woman's attribute is willingness—such is the law of the sexes, verily! a hard law for woman! All human beings are innocent of their existence, women, however, are doubly innocent; who could have enough of salve and gentleness for them!"—"What about salve! What about gentleness!" called out another person in the crowd, "we must educate women better!"—"We must educate men better," said the wise man, and made a sign to the youth to follow him.—The youth, however, did not follow him.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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