Twilight of the idols Quotes

“Twilight of the idols, it cursed from the worship of the extinguished candles.”

“In order that there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or imperative, which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity of chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum.”

“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.”

“to have to combat one’s instincts—that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.”

“One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.”

“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”

“if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.”

“We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking.”

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

“That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art - panem et Circen.”