Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Democratic institutions protect society from oppressive powers and control.
This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that democratic institutions serve as a safeguard against tyranny by containing and regulating the inherent desires for power and oppression present in human nature. Just as a quarantine isolates illness to prevent its spread, democratic frameworks aim to diminish the potential for tyrannical rule by promoting accountability, checks and balances, and participation from the populace.
Themes
DemocracyTyrannyInstitutionsFreedomPowerSafeguard
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on political science, I referenced Nietzsche's view on democracy as a protective measure against tyranny.
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
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Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia.
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Thus Gotama [Buddha] walked toward the town to gather alms, and the two samanas recognized him solely by the perfection of his repose, by the calmness of his figure, in which there was no trace of seeking, desiring, imitating, or striving, only light and peace
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A man who gives himself to be a possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life, having bartered his soul to a brute-master. He is not of them. He may stand against them, persuade himself of a mission, batter and twist them into something which they, of their own accord, would not have been.
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A conceptual scheme is never discarded merely because of a few stubborn facts with which it cannot be reconciled; a conceptual scheme is either modified or replaced by a better one, never abandoned with nothing left to take its place.
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