Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nietzsche critiques the assumption that existence implies entitlement to continuation.
In this quote, Nietzsche challenges a common human belief that simply because something exists, it deserves to continue existing or have inherent value. He prompts us to question the nature of existence and entitlement, suggesting that existence alone does not justify the right or the necessity of something's permanence. This quote encourages deeper thought about values, ethics, and the arbitrary nature of existence.
Themes
ExistenceEntitlementValuePhilosophyEthics
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophy class discussing existentialism.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes →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
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Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky.
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Drink up, boys, drink up and don’t worry, if we finish this bottle we’ll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won’t be the same as the one we’ve got now, but it’ll still be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don’t make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don’t you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.
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Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
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To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.
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you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry
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Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
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