Home > Work > The Will to Power

The Will to Power QUOTES

The Will to Power QUOTES

101 " Nihilism. It is ambiguous:

A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.

B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

102 " That is the greatest error ever committed, the most disastrous error on earth: believing that in the forms of reason, we had in our possession a criterion of reality, whereas we had them in order to gain mastery over reality, in order to misunderstand it in a shrewd way...
— And behold, the world became false precisely because of the qualities which constitute its reality: change, becoming, multiplicity, opposition, strife, war. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

103 " In sum: the world might be far more valuable than we used to believe; we must see through the naiveté of our ideals, and while we thought that we had accorded it the highest interpretation, we may not have given our human existence a moderately fair value. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

104 " The great majority of men have no right to life, and serve only to disconcert the elect among our race; I do not yet grant the unfit that right. There are even unfit peoples. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

105 " The root of all evil: that the slavish morality of meekness, chastity, selflessness, absolute obedience, has triumphed — ruling natures were thus condemned (1) to hypocrisy, (2) to torments of conscience — creative natures felt like rebels against God, uncertain and inhibited by eternal values.

In summa: the best things have been slandered because the weak or the immoderate swine have cast a bad light on them—and the best men have remained hidden—and have often misunderstood themselves. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

106 " We new philosophers, however, not only do we begin by presenting the actual gradations in rank and variations in value among us but we also desire the very opposite of an assimilation, an equalizing: we teach estrangement in every sense, we tear open gaps as never were, we want man to become more wicked than he ever was. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

107 " The most powerful and most dangerous passions of man, of which he can most easily perish, have been outlawed so completely that the most powerful men themselves have become impossible, or have had to feel evil – 'harmful and forbidden.' This loss is considerable, but hitherto it has been unavoidable: now that a host of counterforces has been reared by the temporary suppression of those passions (of lust for power, pleasure in change and deception), it is again possible to unloose them: they will no longer possess their old savagery. We permit ourselves a tame barbarism: just look at our artists and statesmen. "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power

108 " For, why is the triumph of Nihilism inevitable now? Because the very values current amongst us to-day will arrive at their logical conclusion in Nihilism,—because Nihilism is the only possible outcome of our greatest values and ideals,—because we must first experience Nihilism before we can realise what the actual worth of these “values” was.... "

― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Will to Power