Frederick Nietzsche Quotes

The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.

It takes chaos to give birth to a dancing star

He who has a Why can endure any How.

I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.

This is my way, what is your way? The way doesn't exist.

The anthropological criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo [monstrous in appearance, monstrous in spirit].

The worst sickness of men tends to originate in the sentimental way they try to combat their sicknesses. What seems like an easy cure, in the long run produces something worse than what it's supposed to overcome. Fake consolations always have to be paid for with a general and profound worsening of the original complaint.

The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.

They died out there, in countless numbers, not for government officials in Berlin, but for their old countries, gilded by the centuries, and for their common fatherland, Europe, the Europe of Virgil and Ronsard, the Europe of Erasmus and Nietzsche, of Raphael and Dürer, the Europe of St. Ignatius and St. Theresa, the Europe of Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Any human being who does not wish to be part of the masses need only stop making things easy for himself. Let him follow his conscience, which calls out to him: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you." Every young soul hears this call by day and by night and shudders with excitement at the premonition of that degree of happiness which eternities have prepared for those who will give thought to their true liberation. There is no way to help any soul attain this happiness, however, so long as it remains shackled with the chains of opinion and fear. And how hopeless and meaningless life can become without such a liberation! There is no drearier, sorrier creature in nature than the man who has evaded his own genius and who squints now towards the right, now towards the left, now backwards, now in any direction whatever.

Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, and the incomparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Adventure tales offering superb insight into solitude, both its horror and its beauty, include The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard E. Byrd. Science-focused books that provided me with further understanding of how solitude affects people include Social by Matthew D. Lieberman, Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan Cain, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. Also offering astute ideas about aloneness are Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, The Life of Saint Anthony by Saint Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with Himself”), the verse of William Wordsworth, and the poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih. It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates, comes from the C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an invaluable resource—I spent weeks immersed in the site, though I did not qualify to become a member of the hermit-only chat groups. My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout history. I was fascinated by the stories of Japanese soldiers who continued fighting World War II for decades on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time. Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fascinating account.

Nietzsche: "La memoria y el orgullo estaban luchando. La memoria dijo: fue así, y el orgullo respondió: no pudo haber sido así, y la memoria se dio por vencida".

To ask a question is to invest in attentiveness, to declare a stake in the answer and that is one of the many gifts of chess; you cease to be a passive recipient of information and become an active learner, an intrinsically rewarding experience. Playing chess is about posing questions to the opponent, and answering the questions they pose you. The little questions are always nested inside bigger ones. As you get better at the game you zoom into the most important questions quickly and you can sense that they are the most important questions because they speak to the conceptual ambiguity that holds your attention. Your overall question is, how can I check mate the opponents king? But the recurring questions that help you answer that include; What am I trying to achieve here? What happens if I go there? What do I do now? How will he respond to that? What does that knight want? The anti-philosopher Frederick Nietzsche saw more deeply into questions than most. We only hear those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

The Doors music has been included in movies and their career has inspired feature films. Chapter 8 - The Doors at The Movies Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison were film students at UCLA when they met. They both had an abiding interest in film and the past masters as well as creating a new cinema. Through The Doors they did create cinema. At first, one strictly of The Doors, but as their influence and legend spread through culture they, in turn, inspired those that were creating movies.   The Doors Film Feast of Friends Late in March 1968 (the exact date is unknown) The Doors decided to film a documentary of their forthcoming tour. The idea may have come about because Bobby Neuwirth, who was hired to hang out with Jim and try to direct his energies to more productive pursuits than drinking, produced a film Not to Touch the Earth that utilized behind the scenes film of The Doors. The band set up an initial budget of $20,000 for the project. Former UCLA film students Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek hired film school friends Paul Ferrara as director of photography, Frank Lisciandro as editor, and Morrison friend Babe Hill as the sound recorder. The first show shot, for what would be later named Feast of Friends, was the April 13th performance at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds. Overall shooting of the film lasted for five months between March and September, and captured the riots in Cleveland and the Singer Bowl. Filming culminated in Saratoga Springs, New York, where backstage Morrison goofed around on a warm up piano and improvised a hilarious ode to Frederick Nietzsche. After filming started, the concept grew and Feast of Friends was to incorporate fictional scenes (some version of HWY?). But problems started to arise. The live sound, in parts, was unusable so the decision was made to use the album cuts of Doors songs. The budget grew by another $10,000 and the film still wasn’t finished. A decision was made by Ray, Robby and John to pull the plug on the film, but Paul Ferrara appealed to Jim and a compromise was worked out. The fictional scenes would be dropped and another $4,000 was added to the budget to complete the editing. The completed film runs to about thirty-eight minutes and is mostly images taken from different shows, or the band prior to a show. It has some footage of the Singer Bowl riot, which shows the riot in full flower, the stage crowded with policemen and fans. Occasionally, Morrison comes out of nowhere to encourage it all. The centerpiece of the film is The End from the Hollywood Bowl show. The film suffers a bit from not using live sound, the superimposition of album cuts of songs (except the Hollywood Bowl footage) removes the viewer from the immediacy and impact of The Doors. Feast of Friends was later accepted at five major film festivals, including the Atlanta International Film Festival that Frank Lisciandro describes in An Hour For Magic. In later years Feast of Friends was shelved, missing the late 70’s midnight movie circuit showing rock films. In the 80’s with the advent of MTV, Ray Manzarek started producing videos of Doors songs for showing on MTV and they relied heavily on the Feast of Friends footage. Chances are that even if you haven’t seen Feast of Friends you’ve seen a lot of the footage.   Jim Morrison Films HWY The Doors had laid low for just over a month. On March 1, 1969, the ‘Miami Incident’ had occurred, at first with no reaction more than any other Doors show, and the band went off on a prearranged Jamaican vacation in anticipation

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed. —Frederick Nietzsche

The concept, "all men are equal before God" does an extraordinary amount of harm; actions and attitudes of mind were forbidden which belonged to the prerogative of the strong alone, just as if they were in themselves unworthy of man. All the tendencies of strong men were brought into disrepute by the fact that the defensive weapons of the most weak (even of those who were weakest towards themselves) were established as a standard of valuation. The confusion went so far that precisely the great virtuosos of life (whose self-control presents the sharpest contrast to the vicious and the unbridled) were branded with the most opprobrious names. Even to this day people feel themselves compelled to disparage a Cesare Borgia: it is simply ludicrous. The Church has anathematised German Kaisers owing to their vices: as if a monk or a priest had the right to say a word as to what a Frederick II. should allow himself. Don Juan is sent to hell: this is very naïf. Has anybody ever noticed that all interesting men are lacking in heaven? ... This is only a hint to the girls, as to where they may best find salvation. If one think at all logically, and also have a profound insight into that which makes a great man, there, can be no doubt at all that the Church has dispatched all "great men" to Hades — its fight is against all "greatness in man".

When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back