How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy.
Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it
All rejection and negation indicates a deficiency in fertility: fundamentally, if only we were good plowland we would allow nothing to go unused, and in every thing, event, and person we would welcome manure, rain, or sunshine.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation.
Error has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. Pure knowledge could not have been capable of it.
All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.