Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
In those days it was possible for a Greek to flee from an over-abundant reality as though it were but the tricky scheming off the imagination-and to flee, not like Plato into the land of eternal ideas, into the workshop off the world-creator, feasting one's eyes on the unblemished unbreakable archetypes, but into the rigor mortis off the coldest emptiest concept off all, the concept of being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nietzsche critiques the tendency to escape reality by retreating into abstract ideas, suggesting that such an escape is ultimately empty.
In this quote, Friedrich Nietzsche reflects on the philosophical tendency of some thinkers, particularly the Greeks, to abandon the complexities and challenges of reality in favor of abstract ideas. Rather than seeking solace in the ideal forms proposed by Plato, Nietzsche argues that this retreat leads to an encounter with the starkness of existence itself, represented as the 'rigor mortis of the coldest emptiest concept.' He suggests that such escapism does not provide solution or fulfillment, but rather exposes the futility of ignoring the tangible world in favor of aloof conceptualizations.
Themes
PhilosophyRealityAbstractionExistenceNietzscheEscapism
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of facing challenges head-on, one might reference Nietzsche's thoughts on reality versus abstraction.
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.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
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.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Similar quotes
As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.
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Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
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Prana is implicate to matter but explicate to mind; mind is implicate to prana but explicate to soul; soul is implicate to mind but explicate to spirit; and the spirit is the source and suchness of the entire sequence.
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The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
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Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.
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Why do we spend years using up our bodies to nurture our minds with experience and find our minds turning then to our exhausted bodies for solace?
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