Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.
Interpretation
It takes more courage to question and challenge oneβs own beliefs than to simply hold onto them.
In this quote, Friedrich Nietzsche highlights the often overlooked bravery required to critically examine and challenge oneβs own convictions. Rather than simply having steadfastness in beliefs, true courage lies in the willingness to confront and scrutinize those beliefs, which can lead to greater understanding and personal growth.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophy class discussion about the nature of belief and conviction.
Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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.
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.
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
...the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.
Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked β or that America is culturally bankrupt.
But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man
In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.
Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.
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