Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.

Men seldom persevere in a vocation unless they believe or can convince themselves that it is fundamentally more important than anyother calling. Women are the same with their lovers.

History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.

Many people, especially women, never experience boredom because they have never learned to work properly.

A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

To become wise you have to want to experience certain experiences, and so to run into their open jaws. This is very dangerous, tobe sure; many a "wise man" has been eaten up in doing so.

All good things were formerly bad things; every original sin has turned into an original virtue.