Quotes from On the Genealogy of Morals

“We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“. . . there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“We are noble, good, beautiful, and happy!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Human history would be nothing but a record of stupidity save for the cunning contributions of the weak”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“At this point, I can no longer avoid setting out, in an initial, provisional statement, my own hypothesis about the origin of “bad conscience.” It is not easy to get people to attend to it, and it requires them to consider it at length, to guard it, and to sleep on it. I consider bad conscience the profound illness which human beings had to come down with, under the pressure of the most fundamental of all the changes which they experienced—that change when they finally found themselves locked within the confines of society and peace. Just like the things water animals must have gone though when they were forced either to become land animals or to die off, so events must have played themselves out with this half-beast so happily adapted to the wilderness, war, wandering around, adventure—suddenly all its instincts were devalued and “disengaged.”

From this point on, these animals were to go on foot and “carry themselves”; whereas previously they had been supported by the water. A terrible heaviness weighed them down. In performing the simplest things they felt ungainly. In dealing with this new unknown world, they no longer had their old leader, the ruling unconscious drives which guided them safely. These unfortunate creatures were reduced to thinking, inferring, calculating, bringing together cause and effect, reduced to their “consciousness,” their most impoverished and error-prone organ! I believe that on earth there has never been such a feeling of misery, such a leaden discomfort—while at the same time those old instincts had not all at once stopped imposing their demands! Only it was difficult and seldom possible to do their bidding. For the most part, they had to find new and, as it were, underground satisfactions for them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Thus, the philosopher dislikes marriage as well as what might persuade him into it??marriage is a barrier and a disaster along his route to the optimal. What great philosopher up to now has been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibtniz, Kant, Schopenhauer?? None of these got married. What`s more, we cannot even imagine them married. A married philosopher belongs in a comedy, that`s my principle. And Socrates, the exception, the malicious Socrates, it appears, got married ironically to demonstrate this very principle.

Every philosopher would speak as once Buddha spoke when someone told him of the birth his son, "Rahula has been born to me. A shackle has been forged for me." (Rahula here means "a little demon"). To every "free spirit" there must come a reflective hour, provided that previously he has had a one without thought, of the sort that came then to Buddha - "Life in a house," he thought to himself, "is narrow and confined, a polluted place. Freedom consists of abandoning houses;" "because he thought this way, he left the house.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Somebody said: "About two persons I have never reflected very thoroughly: that is the testimony of my love for them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“history would be nothing but a record of stupidity save for the cunning”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“...wherever the strength of a faith steps decisively into the foreground, we infer a certain weakness in its ability to demonstrate its truth, even the improbability of what it believes. We, too, do not deny that the belief “makes blessed,” but for that very reason we deny that the belief proves something—a strong belief which confers blessedness creates doubts about what it has faith in. It does not ground “truth.” It grounds a certain probability— delusion.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“But there is no such substratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed-the deed is everything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, for of us holds good to all eternity the motto, “Each one is the farthest away from himself”—as far as ourselves are concerned we are not “knowers.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“When the Christian Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order of assassins, that order of free spirits par excellence, whose lowest grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order of monks has ever attained, then in some way or other they managed to get an inkling of that symbol and tally- word, that was reserved for the highest grade alone as their secretum, "Nothing is true, everything is allowed," — in sooth, that was freedom of thought, thereby was taking leave of the very belief in truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Debemos guardarnos de la confusión en que por contiguity [contiguidad] psicológica, para decirlo igual que los ingleses, muy fácilmente cae un artista: la de creer que él mismo es aquello que él puede representar, concebir, expresar. En realidad ocurre que, si él lo fuera, no lo podría en absoluto representar, concebir, expresar.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“My thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices – for that is what this polemic is about – were first set out in a sketchy and provisional way in the collection of aphorisms entitled Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, which I began to write in Sorrento during a winter that enabled me to pause, like a wanderer pauses, to take in the vast and dangerous land through which my mind had hitherto travelled. This was in the winter of 1876–7; the thoughts themselves go back further. They were mainly the same thoughts which I shall be taking up again in the present essays – let us hope that the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, brighter, stronger and more perfect! The fact that I still stick to them today, and that they themselves in the meantime have stuck together increasingly firmly, even growing into one another and growing into one, makes me all the more blithely confident that from the first, they did not arise in me individually, randomly or sporadically but as stemming from a single root, from a fundamental will to knowledge deep inside me which took control, speaking more and more clearly and making ever clearer demands. And this is the only thing proper for a philosopher. We have no right to stand out individually: we must not either make mistakes or hit on the truth individually. Instead, our thoughts, values, every ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ grow from us with the same inevitability as fruits borne on the tree – all related and referring to one another and a testimonial to one will, one health, one earth, one sun. – Do you like the taste of our fruit? – But of what concern is that to the trees? And of what concern is it to us philosophers? . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Oh, como somos felizes, nós que procuramos o conhecimento, se não quebrarmos o silêncio prematuramente!...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority) – not only are they better, but they have a “better time”, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can’t bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated – it seems to me just to stink of lies.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Insight into the origin of a work concerns the physiologists and vivisectionists of the spirit; never the aesthetic man, the artist!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, and with good reason. We have never looked at ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“ (…) não existe, talvez, nada mais assustador e mais sinistro em toda a pré-história do homem que a sua técnica para se lembrar das coisas.” Alguma coisa é impressa, para que permaneça na memória: apenas o que dói incessantemente é recordado” – este é uma proposição central da mais antiga (e, infelizmente, também a mais duradoura) filosofia na Terra. Uma pessoa pode até sentir-se tentada a dizer que algo deste horror – através da qual em tempos se fizeram promessas por toda a Terra e foram dadas garantias e empenhamentos -, algo disto ainda sobrevive sempre que a solenidade, seriedade, secretismo e cores sombrias se encontram na vida dos homens e das nações: o passado, o passado mais longo, mais profundo e mais desagradável, respira sobre nós e brota em nós sempre que nos tornamos “sérios”. As coisas nunca avançaram sem sangue, tortura e vítimas, quando o homem achou necessário forjar uma memória de si próprio. Os sacrifícios e as oferendas mais horrendos (…), as mutilações mais repulsivas (…), os rituais mais cruéis de todos os cultos religiosos ( e todas as religiões são, nas suas fundações mais profundas, sistemas de crueldade) - todas estas coisas tem origem naquele instinto que adivinhou que a mais poderosa ajuda da memória era a dor.
Num certo sentido, todo o ascetismo faz parte disto: algumas ideias tem de tornar-se inextinguíveis, omnipresentes, inesquecíveis, “fixas” – com o objectivo de hipnotizar todo o sistema nervoso e intelecto através destas “ideias fixas” – e os procedimentos e formas de vida ascéticos são o meio de libertar essas ideias da competição com todas as outras ideias, para torna-las “inesquecíveis”. Quanto maior era a memoria da humanidade, mais assustadores parecem ser os seus costumes; a dureza dos códigos de punição, em particular, dá uma medida da quantidade de esforço que é necessária para triunfar sobre o esquecimento e tornar estes escravos efémeros da emoção e do desejo atentos a alguns requisitos primitivos de coabitação social. (…) Para dominar (…) recorreram a meios assustadores (…) de apedrejamento, (…), a empalação na estaca, a dilaceração ou o espezinhamento por cavalos, (…), queimar o criminoso em azeite (…), a prática popular de esfolamento, (…) cobrir o criminoso de mel e deixá-lo às moscas num sol abrasador. Com a ajuda deste tipo de imagens e procedimentos, a pessoa acaba por memorizar cinco ou seis “Não farei”, fazendo assim a promessa em troca das vantagens oferecidas pela sociedade. E de facto! com a ajuda deste tipo de memória, a pessoa acaba por “ver a razão”! Ah, razão, seriedade, domínio das emoções, todo o caso sombrio que dá pelo nome de pensamento, todos esses privilégios e exemplos do homem: que preço elevado que foi pago por eles! Quanto sangue e horror está no fundo de todas as “coisas boas”!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“– the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realized that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transformation of values, which was at the same time an act of the most cunning revenge.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Certainly one quality which nowadays has been best forgotten—and that is why it will take some time yet for my writings to become readable—is essential in order to practise reading as an art—a quality for the exercise of which it is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man!—rumination.   SILS-MARIA, UPPER ENGADINE, July, 1887.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“as though the Universe itself were under an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are involved. And”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Man will desire oblivion rather than not desire at all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“The ascetic ideal has an aim - this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“It is possible to conceive of a society blessed with so great a consciousness of its own power as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting its wrong-doers go scot-free. -”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and "not itself: and this "no" is its creative deed. This”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, "both are fetters. The perfect man is master of them both.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“An investigation of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that cooperative unions for poverty, sickness, and burial sprang up in the lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits, was deliberately fostered. Perchance”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“I soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices, and I gave up looking for a supernatural origin of evil. A”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

“In the Latin malus19 (to which I juxtapose µέλας)20 the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and above all as the black-haired (‘hic niger est’),21 as the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion distinguished them from the dominant blonds, namely the Aryan conquering race;22 at any rate Gaelic23 has afforded me the exact analogue – fin (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal),24 the word designating the nobility, finally – the good, the noble, the pure, but originally blonds in contrast to the swarthy, black-haired aboriginals.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals

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