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 →That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
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Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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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 — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — 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.
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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.
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The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
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