Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mountain climbing equalizes people, revealing their true nature regardless of societal labels.
In this quote, Nietzsche suggests that the challenges faced in mountain climbing can strip away social pretenses and reveal the fundamental similarities between individuals, whether deemed 'good' or 'bad'. The struggle against nature in such a demanding environment brings out the raw essence of human character, highlighting that beneath the labels of saint and blackguard, we share a common humanity forged through experience and adversity.
Themes
Mountain ClimbingHuman NatureAdversitySelf-Discovery
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges, one might say, 'As Nietzsche pointed out, a few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.'
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes βThat which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
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.
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
But I'm a bad priest, you see. I know--from experience--how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh, no, they were just as quick and light and . . .
Graham GreeneRead
However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.
Tony BlairRead
People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.
C. Wright MillsRead
Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.
William CongreveRead
Government acquisition of food supplies in time of war is no less important than conscription. Equity is the fundamental principle applicable to both these essential phases of war administration.
Chiang Kai-ShekRead
We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world.
Robert Baden-PowellRead