The Antichrist: Original Classics and Annotated

by Friedrich Nietzsche

If he was anything in a word, Nietzsche was a Greek born two thousand years too late.

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant.

To think that no one has thought of Kant’s categorical imperative as dangerous to life!... The theological instinct alone took it under protection!—An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as an objection.... What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for décadence, and no less for idiocy.... Kant became an idiot.—And

In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to Buddhism.

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are sceptical.

The strength, the freedom which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, manifest themselves as scepticism.