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Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former - although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity.
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Brave people may be persuaded to an action by representing it as being more dangerous than it really is.
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And it is the great noon when man stands at the midpoint of his course between beast and superman and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.
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If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!
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Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must actually be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming impure. Behold, I teach you the superman: he is the this sea, in him can your great contempt go under.
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What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate - and immediately forget we have done so.
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Every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment.
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Art depends upon the inexactitude of sight.
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You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should ou have your pride in the morning nad your resignation in the evening?
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Has a woman who knew she was well-dressed ever caught a cold?
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The most dangerous physicians are those born actors who imitate born physicians with a perfectly deceptive guile.
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The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces.
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However unchristian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill feeling towards myself.
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What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?
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There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my "evil eye" for this world, which is also my "evil ear".
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Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.
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Could one count such dilettantes and old spinsters as that mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainländer, as a genuine German? In the last analysis he probably was a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralize).
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Interest in Education will acquire great strength only from the moment when belief in a God and His care is renounced, just as the art of healing could only flourish when the belief in miracle cures ceased.
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No more fiction, for now we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.
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"God", "the immortality of the soul", "salvation", "the beyond"-even as a child I had no time for such notions, I do not waste any time upon them-maybe I was never childish enough for that?
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I would only believe in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!
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For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are here, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them!
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If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
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Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.