Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nietzsche critiques Christianity for imposing guilt on human sexuality and life itself.
In this quote, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that Christianity has historically associated sexuality with shame and impurity, thereby fostering a negative perception of the very essence of human existence. He suggests that this resentment against life and natural instincts has distorted the understanding of sexuality, portraying it as something dirty rather than a fundamental aspect of life to be embraced and celebrated.
Themes
ChristianitySexualityResentmentLifeGuilt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the historical impact of religion on modern attitudes towards sex.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes βThat 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
If nationalism makes us poor, weak, and morally insecure, how can it claim to be patriotic? I maintain that nationalists are unpatriotic.
Frans TimmermansRead
I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.
Karl MarxRead
In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.
Ram DassRead
If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
Blaise PascalRead
Nobody can claim the name of Pedro, nobody is Rosa or MarΓa, all of us are dust or sand, all of us are rain under rain. They have spoken to me of Venezuelas, of Chiles and Paraguays; I have no idea what they are saying. I know only the skin of the earth and I know it has no name.
Pablo NerudaRead