QuoteProject
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.
Friedrich Nietzsche
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Self-despair can coexist with self-respect in one's ability to critique oneself.

This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that even someone who holds a negative view of themselves possesses a form of self-respect through their ability to acknowledge and critique their own flaws. The act of despising oneself indicates a reflection and awareness of personal shortcomings, revealing a complex relationship between self-perception and self-respect.

Themes

Self-RespectSelf-DespiseSelf-AwarenessPhilosophySelf-Critique

In practice

Example use cases

In a psychological discussion about the nature of self-esteem.

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 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

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action.
Malcolm XRead
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.
VoltaireRead
In reality, I am more a professor, one who reflects and mediates on spiritual questions. Practical governance is not my strong point, and this is certainly a weakness. But I do not see myself as a failure. For eight years, I carried out my work.
Pope Benedict XviRead
That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.
Dorothy AllisonRead
Most religions live from a narrative that shapes their relationship with the divine other, God or the gods, and with the human other, the stranger.
Timothy RadcliffeRead
Sometimes the story we're telling the world isn't half as endearing as the one that lives inside us.
Donald MillerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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