QuoteProject
People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous.
Friedrich Nietzsche
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that people with dull lives may turn to religion for meaning, but they shouldn't expect the same from those who find life fulfilling.

Friedrich Nietzsche points out the tendency of individuals who find their daily lives lacking in excitement or purpose to seek solace in religion. He argues that while this inclination is understandable, it is unfair for them to impose their views and expectations of religious sentiment on those who experience life in a richer, more meaningful way.

Themes

ReligionLifeNihilismMeaningExistence

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a discussion on the role of religion in people's lives at a philosophy seminar.

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
That 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 — 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.
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

Lent is a good time for sacrificing. Let us deny ourselves something every day to help others.
Pope FrancisRead
We are concerned with that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names - liberals, leftists, etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country's 'inhumanity to the black man.'
Steven BikoRead
...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail.
Matt TaibbiRead
Two loves have made two different cities: self-love hath made a terrestrial city, which rises in contempt of God; and Divine Love hath made a celestial one, which rises in contempt of self. The former glories in itself - the latter in God.
Saint AugustineRead
I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.
Marjane SatrapiRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.