QuoteProject
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
Friedrich Nietzsche
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Nietzsche suggests that belief in magic and miracles arises from a human desire to understand and control nature through the lens of religion.

In this quote, Nietzsche delves into the relationship between human belief systems and the natural world. He posits that the inclination to believe in magic and miracles stems from a reflective attempt to understand and impose laws on nature, which ultimately leads to the development of religious practices. This reflection highlights a fundamental human aspiration to comprehend and navigate the complexities of existence, as well as the creation of narratives that provide structure and meaning in the face of the unknown.

Themes

BeliefReligionNatureMagicMiraclesReflection

In practice

Example use cases

During a philosophy class discussing the origins of belief systems.

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness β€” as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne β€” and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
Friedrich NietzscheRead

Similar quotes

Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.
Alfred BinetRead
We vary greatly in the natural advantages that we've been given. The world's not fair
Malcolm GladwellRead
Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions.
Soren KierkegaardRead
The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.
PlatoRead
I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder: it was before Photography that men had the most to say about the vision of the double. Heautoscopy was compared with an hallucinosis; for centuries this was a great mythic theme.
Roland BarthesRead
I don't do formal debates, because formal debates where you have two people up on a stage in equal status, and each of them is given 20 minutes to give their point of view, and then 10 minutes for a rebuttal, or whatever, that creates the illusion that you really do have here two equal points of view of equal scientific standing.
Richard DawkinsRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.