Daybreak Quotes

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“I deny morality as I deny alchemy.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Those who commend work.- In the glorification of 'work', in the unwearied talk of the 'blessing of work', I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work - one always means by work that hard industriousness from early till late - that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence. For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. - And now! Horror! Precisely the 'worker' has becomedangerous!The place is swarming with 'dangerous individuals'! And behind them the danger of dangers -theindividual!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Whatever they may think and say about their" egoism ", the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“A: So you intend to return to your desert?

B: I am not quick moving. I have to wait for myself— it is always late before the water comes to light out of the well of my self, and I often have to endure thirst for longer than I have patience. That is why I go into solitude— so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think as I really think; after a time it always seems as though they want to banish me from myself and rob me of my soul— and I grow angry with everybody and fear everybody. I then require the desert, so as to grow good again.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Our evaluations. - All actions may be traced back to evaluations, all evaluations are original or adopted - the latter being by far the most common. Why do we adopt them? From fear - that is to say, we consider it more advisable to pretend they are our own - and accustom ourself to this pretense, so that at length it becomes our own nature. Original evaluation: that is to say, to assess a thing according to the extent to which it pleases or displeases us alone and no one else - something excessively rare! But must our evaluation of another, in which there lies motive for our general availing ourselves of his HIS evaluation, at least not proceed from US, be our OWN determination? Yes, but we arrive at it as children, and rarely learn to change our view; most of us are our whole lives long the fools of the way we acquired in childhood of judging our neighbors (their minds, rank, morality, whether they are exemplary or reprehensible) and of finding it necessary to pay homage to their evaluations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Moderation sees itself as beautiful; it is unaware that in the eye of the immoderate it appears black and sober and consequently ugly-looking”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“In the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste - a malicious taste, perhaps? - no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is 'in a hurry'. For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow- it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it Lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book: - this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers... My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: Learn to read me well!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Business people - Your business - is your greatest prejudice: it ties you to your locality, to the company you keep, to the inclinations you feel. Diligent in business - but indolent in spirit, content with your inadequacy, and with the cloak of duty hung over this contentment: that is how you live, that is how you want your children to live!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“The Christian church is an encyclopaedia of prehistoric cults and conceptions of the most diverse orgiin and that is why it is so capable of proselytising: it always could and it can still go wherever it pleases and it always found and it always finds something similar to itself to which it can adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Every smallest step in the field of free thinking, and of the personally formed life, has ever been fought for at the cost of spiritual and physical tortures... change has required its innumerable martyrs.... Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and sense of freedom that is now the basis of our pride.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day: Friedrich Nietzsche

“The sum of the inner movements which a man finds easy and as a consequence performs gracefully and with pleasure, one calls his soul; if these inner movements are plainly difficult and an effort for him, he is considered soulless.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“The drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imagine
such a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference – perhaps,
indeed, we too are unrequited lovers.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Knowing one's 'individuality'. - We are too prone to forget that in the eyes of people who are seeing us for the first time we are something quite different from what we consider ourselves to be: usually we are nothing more than a single individual trait which leaps to the eye and determines the whole impression that we make.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“It is not true that the unconscious goal in the evolution of every conscious being (animal, man, mankind, etc) is its 'highest happiness': the case, on the contrary, is that every stage of evolution possesses a special and incomparable happiness neither higher nor lower but simply its own. Evolution does not have happiness in view, but evolution and nothing else.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Why do we fear and hate a possible reversion to barbarism? Because it would make people unhappier than they are? Oh no! The barbarians of every age were happier: let us not deceive ourselves! The reason is that our drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or the happiness of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imagine such a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference perhaps, indeed, we too are unrequited lovers! Knowledge has in us been transformed into a passion which shrinks at no sacrifice and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinction; we believe in all honesty that all mankind must believe itself more exalted and comforted under the compulsion and suffering of this passion than it did formerly, when envy of the coarser contentment that follows in the train of barbarism had not yet been overcome. Perhaps mankind will even perish of this passion for knowledge! even this thought has no power over us! But did Christianity ever shun such a thought? Are love and death not brothers? Yes, we hate barbarism we would all prefer the destruction of mankind to a regression of knowledge! And finally: if mankind does not perish of a passion it will perish of a weakness: which do you prefer? This is the main question. Do we desire for mankind an end in fire and light or one in the sand?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Ah, give me madness, you heavenly powers! Madness, that I may at last believe in myself!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“The great wars of the present age are the effects of the study of history.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,—poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day

“We are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present, it is not only my habit but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is “in a hurry.” For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of “work”: that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-scurry, which is intent upon “getting things done” at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not “get things done” so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes... my patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Facta! Yes, Facta ficta! - A historian has to do, not with what actually happened, but only with events supposed to have happened: for only the latter have produced an effect. Likewise only with supposed heroes. His theme, so-called world history, is opinions about supposed actions and their supposed motives, which in turn give rise to further opinions and actions, the reality of which is however at once vaporised again and produces an effect only as vapour - a continual generation and pregnancy of phantoms over the impentetrable mist of unfathomable reality. All historians speak of things which have never existed except in imagination.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Prejudice of the learned. – The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they know what is good and evil, praise- and blameworthy. But it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better than any other age.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Only when he has attained a final knowledge of all things will man have come to know himself. For things are only the boundaries of man.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“The great problems are to be encountered in the street.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality