One who hates is a man holding a magnifying-glass, and when he hates someone, he knows precisely that person's surface, from the soles of his feet all the way up to each hair on the hated head
Interpretation
Hate distorts perception, allowing a person to focus only on the flaws of those they despise.
This quote emphasizes how hatred alters our perception, enabling individuals to scrutinize others intensely, often to the point of obsession. The metaphor of a magnifying glass illustrates that when one harbors hate, they become fixated on the surface-level traits of their target, missing out on the deeper humanity that exists beyond those perceived flaws.
In practice
In a discussion about the dangers of hatred, this quote can illustrate how it can cloud our judgments.
The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.
No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.
Were one merely to seek information, one should inquire of the man who hates, but if one wishes to know what truly is, one better ask the one who loves
Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]
I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We've never claimed more, and we've never had less.
No one told these American soldiers they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with US patents.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.