Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the idea of eternal recurrence and our relationship with life and its events.
Friedrich Nietzsche presents a thought-provoking scenario where a demon confronts an individual with the idea of living their life over and over again for eternity. This confrontation forces one to reflect on the value and meaning of one's experiences—would you despair at the thought of reliving your struggles, or would you embrace it as a celebration of life? It challenges us to evaluate whether we find our lives worthy of repetition and if we can find joy and divinity within our existence.
Themes
Eternal RecurrenceLifeExistenceValueJoy
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life, this quote could lead to deep reflections.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes →That 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 — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — 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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