Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A hypocrite eventually loses the essence of hypocrisy by becoming so entrenched in their role.
This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche reflects on the nature of hypocrisy and identity. It suggests that when a person consistently acts in a certain way, even if that is hypocritical, they lose the ability to separate their true self from the facade they present to the world. The line implies a transformation where the role played becomes part of the identity, leading to a paradox where the hypocrite no longer recognizes themselves as such, thus creating a deeper commentary on authenticity and self-deception.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about personal integrity during a philosophy class.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes βThat which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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.
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.
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
Similar quotes
As long as we insist on relating to it strictly on our own terms-as strange to us or subject to us-the wilderness is alien, threatening, fearful. We have no choice then but to become its exploiters, and to lose, by consequence, our place in it. It is only when, by humility, openness, generosity, courage, we make ourselves able to relate to it on its terms that it ceases to be alien.
For my part, I love to stand foot to foot with an honest foeman. To open warfare, bold and true hearts raise no objection but the ground of quarrel; it is covert enmity which we have most cause to fear, and best reason to loathe. That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass - deadly to the incautious wayfarer.
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
My proposal is not that we understand what the word βgodβ means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross-and that we take our courage in both hands and allow our meaning for the word βgodβ to be recentered around that point.
Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation
When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.