On the Genealogy of Morals Quotes

“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Human history would be nothing but a record of stupidity save for the cunning contributions of the weak”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Thus, the philosopher dislikes marriage as well as what might persuade him into it??marriage is a barrier and a disaster along his route to the optimal. What great philosopher up to now has been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibtniz, Kant, Schopenhauer?? None of these got married. What`s more, we cannot even imagine them married. A married philosopher belongs in a comedy, that`s my principle. And Socrates, the exception, the malicious Socrates, it appears, got married ironically to demonstrate this very principle.

Every philosopher would speak as once Buddha spoke when someone told him of the birth his son, "Rahula has been born to me. A shackle has been forged for me." (Rahula here means "a little demon"). To every "free spirit" there must come a reflective hour, provided that previously he has had a one without thought, of the sort that came then to Buddha - "Life in a house," he thought to himself, "is narrow and confined, a polluted place. Freedom consists of abandoning houses;" "because he thought this way, he left the house.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“. . . there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Man will desire oblivion rather than not desire at all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“...'I suffer: someone or other must be guilty' – and every sick sheep thinks the same.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“But there is no such substratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed-the deed is everything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“We are noble, good, beautiful, and happy!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering.
The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far―and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning!
It was the only meaning offered so far; any meaning is better than none at all; the ascetic ideal was in every sense the "faute de mieux" par excellence so far.
In it, suffering was interpreted; the tremendous void seemed to have been filled; the door was closed to any kind of suicidal nihilism.
This interpretation - there is no doubt of it - brought fresh suffering with it, deeper, more inward, more poisonous, more life-destructive suffering: it placed all suffering under the perspective of guilt.
But all this notwithstanding - man was saved thereby, he possessed a meaning, he was henceforth no longer 1ike a leaf in the wind, a plaything of nonsense - the "sense-less" - he could now willsomething; no matter at first to what end, why, with what he willed: the will itself was saved.
We can no longer conceal from ourselves what is expressed by all that willing which has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hatred of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wishing, from longing itself.
All this means - let us dare to grasp it - a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; but it is and remains a will.
Man would rather will nothingness than not will at all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“At this point, I can no longer avoid setting out, in an initial, provisional statement, my own hypothesis about the origin of “bad conscience.” It is not easy to get people to attend to it, and it requires them to consider it at length, to guard it, and to sleep on it. I consider bad conscience the profound illness which human beings had to come down with, under the pressure of the most fundamental of all the changes which they experienced—that change when they finally found themselves locked within the confines of society and peace. Just like the things water animals must have gone though when they were forced either to become land animals or to die off, so events must have played themselves out with this half-beast so happily adapted to the wilderness, war, wandering around, adventure—suddenly all its instincts were devalued and “disengaged.”

From this point on, these animals were to go on foot and “carry themselves”; whereas previously they had been supported by the water. A terrible heaviness weighed them down. In performing the simplest things they felt ungainly. In dealing with this new unknown world, they no longer had their old leader, the ruling unconscious drives which guided them safely. These unfortunate creatures were reduced to thinking, inferring, calculating, bringing together cause and effect, reduced to their “consciousness,” their most impoverished and error-prone organ! I believe that on earth there has never been such a feeling of misery, such a leaden discomfort—while at the same time those old instincts had not all at once stopped imposing their demands! Only it was difficult and seldom possible to do their bidding. For the most part, they had to find new and, as it were, underground satisfactions for them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which has no history is definable.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“…how ready they themselves are at bottom to make one pay; how they crave to be hangmen. There is among them an abundance of the vengeful disguised as judges, who constantly bear the word “justice” in their mouths like poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always ready to spit upon all who are not discontented but go their own way in good spirits…The will of the weak to represent some form of superiority, their instinct for devious paths to tyranny over the healthy – where can it not be discovered, this will to power of the weakest!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Read from a distant star the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps tempt one to conclude that the earth is the ascetic planet par excellence, a nook of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive creatures who could not get rid of a deep displeasure with themselves, with the earth, with all life and who caused themselves as much pain as possible out of pleasure in causing pain:―probably their only pleasure.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“My thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices – for that is what this polemic is about – were first set out in a sketchy and provisional way in the collection of aphorisms entitled Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, which I began to write in Sorrento during a winter that enabled me to pause, like a wanderer pauses, to take in the vast and dangerous land through which my mind had hitherto travelled. This was in the winter of 1876–7; the thoughts themselves go back further. They were mainly the same thoughts which I shall be taking up again in the present essays – let us hope that the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, brighter, stronger and more perfect! The fact that I still stick to them today, and that they themselves in the meantime have stuck together increasingly firmly, even growing into one another and growing into one, makes me all the more blithely confident that from the first, they did not arise in me individually, randomly or sporadically but as stemming from a single root, from a fundamental will to knowledge deep inside me which took control, speaking more and more clearly and making ever clearer demands. And this is the only thing proper for a philosopher. We have no right to stand out individually: we must not either make mistakes or hit on the truth individually. Instead, our thoughts, values, every ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ grow from us with the same inevitability as fruits borne on the tree – all related and referring to one another and a testimonial to one will, one health, one earth, one sun. – Do you like the taste of our fruit? – But of what concern is that to the trees? And of what concern is it to us philosophers? . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Somebody said: "About two persons I have never reflected very thoroughly: that is the testimony of my love for them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy Of Morals

“Dreams. ― We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way ― not at all or in an interesting manner.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“The ancestors of the mightiest tribes must have grown to prodigious proportions . . . in the end the ancestor is necessarily transfigured into a god.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“The history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not had the intellect [Geist] of the powerless injected into it: — let us take the best example straight away. Nothing that has been done on earth against ‘the noble’, ‘the mighty’, ‘the masters’ and ‘the rulers’, is worth mentioning compared with what the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction from its enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge. Only this was fitting for a priestly people with the most entrenched priestly vengefulness. It was the Jews who, rejecting the aristocratic value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = blessed) ventured, with awe-inspiring consistency, to bring about a reversal and held it in the teeth of the most unfathomable hatred (the hatred of the powerless), saying: ‘Only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless, the lowly are good; the suffering, the deprived, the sick, the ugly, are the only pious people, the only ones saved, salvation is for them alone, whereas you rich, the noble and powerful, you are eternally wicked, cruel, lustful, insatiate, godless, you will also be eternally wretched, cursed and damned!’ . . . the slaves’ revolt in morality begins with the Jews: a revolt which has two thousand years of history behind it and which has only been lost sight of because — it was victorious . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

“We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, and with good reason. We have never looked at ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“history would be nothing but a record of stupidity save for the cunning”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“...wherever the strength of a faith steps decisively into the foreground, we infer a certain weakness in its ability to demonstrate its truth, even the improbability of what it believes. We, too, do not deny that the belief “makes blessed,” but for that very reason we deny that the belief proves something—a strong belief which confers blessedness creates doubts about what it has faith in. It does not ground “truth.” It grounds a certain probability— delusion.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“Where does it come from, this sickliness? For man is more sick, uncertain, changeable, indeterminate than any other animal, there is no doubt of that — he is the sick animal: how has that come about? Certainly he has also dared more, done more new things, braved more and challenged fate more than all the other animals put together: he, the great experimenter with himself, discontented and insatiable, wrestling with animals, nature, and gods for ultimate domination — he, still unvanquished, eternally directed toward the future, whose own restless energies never leave him in peace, so that his future digs like a spur into the flesh of every present — how should such a courageous and richly endowed animal not also be the most imperiled, the most chronically and profoundly sick of all sick animals?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness ― there can be no doubt that morality will gradually perish: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe ― the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of spectacles.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“I suffer: someone or other must be guilty " - Every sick sheep thinks the same.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“The Good Person of today is incapable of approaching anything except in a dishonest way–but with innocence, a true blue-eyed virtuously mendacious way. These Good People are ruined: they cannot stand a single truth about Man.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“The slave revolt in morality begins when 'ressentiment' itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward — this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his 'soul.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“He tolerates no other enemy than one in whom nothing is to be despised and a great deal is worthy of respect!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals