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Natürlicher ist unsere Stellung in politicis: wir sehen Probleme der Macht, des Quantums Macht gegen ein anderes Quantum. Wir glauben nicht an ein Recht, das nicht auf der Macht ruht, sich durchzusetzen: wir empfinden alle Rechte als Eroberungen.
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That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.
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All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
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Go through the moral demands...one by one and you will find that man could not live up to them; the intention is not that he should become more moral, but that he should feel as sinful as possible. If man had failed to find this feeling pleasant - why should he have engendered such an idea and adhered to it for so long?... Man was by every means to be made sinful and thereby become excited, animated, enlivened in general. To excite, animate, enliven at any price.
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He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but over the absence of pain where he had anticipated feeling it. A parable.
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For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.
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To be moral, correct, and virtuous is to be obedient to an old established law and custom.
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Those who are devoid of purpose will make the void their purpose.
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So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
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Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a large portion of it is rather the condition of all being-good.
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It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.
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He who humbles himself wants to be exalted.
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The way to transmute your iron duty into gold in everyone's eyes is this: always deliver more than you promise.
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No power can be maintained when it is only represented by hypocrites.
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Beware in the presence of cats: they never give, they do not even retaliate--they only reply, and purr in doing so.
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The purpose of punishment is to improve those who do the punishing--that is the final recourse of those who support punishment.
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To get into just those situations where sham virtues will not suffice, but rather where, as with the ropedancer on his rope, one either falls or stands--or gets down.
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"Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater thing - in which thou art unwilling to believe - is thy body with its big sagacity; it saith not "ego," but doeth it.
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Great things demand that we either remain silent about them or speak in a great manner: in a great manner, that is-cynically and with innocence.
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God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
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The noble soul reveres itself.
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There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.
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The magnitude of a progress is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires.
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Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.