Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nietzsche suggests that belief in magic and miracles arises from a human desire to understand and control nature through the lens of religion.
In this quote, Nietzsche delves into the relationship between human belief systems and the natural world. He posits that the inclination to believe in magic and miracles stems from a reflective attempt to understand and impose laws on nature, which ultimately leads to the development of religious practices. This reflection highlights a fundamental human aspiration to comprehend and navigate the complexities of existence, as well as the creation of narratives that provide structure and meaning in the face of the unknown.
Themes
BeliefReligionNatureMagicMiraclesReflection
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophy class discussing the origins of belief systems.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes βThat which does not kill us makes us stronger.
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Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness β as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne β and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
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Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.
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The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
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That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.
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Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
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Remove the Ego and Avidya (Ignorance) is gone. Look for it, the ego vanishes and the real Self alone remains.
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What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.
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