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Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Hope can lead to suffering by extending one's pain and desires.

Friedrich Nietzsche's quote suggests that hope, rather than being a positive force, can actually exacerbate human suffering. By fostering anticipation for a better future that may never come, hope can trap individuals in a cycle of longing and discontent, ultimately prolonging their torment rather than providing genuine solace or resolution.

Themes

HopeSufferingTormentPhilosophyNietzsche

In practice

Example use cases

During a philosophical discussion on the nature of hope and suffering.

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
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That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
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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 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.
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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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Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation.
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