Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Madness is uncommon in individuals but prevalent in larger groups and societies.
This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that while individual acts of madness are rare, when people come together as groups, such as in parties, nations, or during particular historical periods, irrational behavior tends to become the norm. This reflects the idea that collective consciousness can lead to a loss of individual rationality, resulting in decisions and actions that may seem mad when viewed from a personal perspective.
Themes
MadnessGroupsIndividualsSocietyIrrationality
In practice
Example use cases
During a political rally, one might quote Nietzsche to illustrate the collective mindset of a crowd.
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
There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as though a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice agin, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Albert EinsteinRead
Motion is always a relative thing. I move in relation to something else. Any particle in this universe can change in relation to any other particle; but take the whole universe as one, and in relation to what can it move? There is nothing besides it. So this infinite Unit is unchangeable, immovable, absolute, and this is the Real Man.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Everything is just now. Your existence is just now. Just timeless Now. All the rest is just a dream due to conditioning and memory.
MoojiRead
It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself... Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself... Life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God... for it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life.
Thomas AquinasRead