Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human morality fluctuates over time, influenced by circumstances and habits.
Friedrich Nietzsche's quote addresses the inherent variability in human morality, suggesting that people do not consistently adhere to moral principles at all times. Morality can be seen as a measure of one's ability to make selfless decisions, which can become a regular and habitual practice, ultimately leading to a state he terms 'holiness'. This highlights the complexity of human behavior and the conditions under which moral decisions are made.
Themes
MoralitySelf-DenialHolinessSelf-SacrificeHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate on ethics, one could use this quote to emphasize the complexity of moral decision-making.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes →That 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 — 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
Unfortunately for ethical egoism, the claim that we will all be better off if every one of us does what is in his or her own interest is incorrect. This is shown by what are known as "prisoner's dilemma" situations, which are playing an increasingly important role in discussions of ethical theory... At least on the collective level, therefore, egoism is self-defeating - a conclusion well brought out by Parfit in his aforementioned Reasons and Persons.
Peter SingerRead
Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!
William ShakespeareRead
Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.
James MadisonRead
Each human being is bred with a unique set of potentials that yearn to be fulfilled as surely as the acorn yearns to become the oak within it.
AristotleRead
The statement that 'God is dead' comes from Nietzsche and has recently been trumpeted abroad by some German and American theologians. But the good Lord has not died of this; He who dwells in the heaven laughs at them.
Karl BarthRead