All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time.
Friedrich NietzscheI have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning and still less as an event in my life: in me it is a matter of instinct.
Friedrich NietzscheThey would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer; and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!
Friedrich NietzscheOne should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:-we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.
Friedrich Nietzsche