Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Interpretation
Interpretations of reality are influenced by power rather than objective truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche's quote suggests that our understanding and interpretation of events or truths are often shaped by the prevailing powers in society, rather than being rooted in an absolute truth. It implies that those in positions of power can influence what is accepted as true, highlighting the subjective nature of reality and the role of power dynamics in shaping beliefs and interpretations.
In practice
In a lecture on critical thinking, this quote can illustrate how perspectives can influence understanding.
Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
That 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.
It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.
The true penance comes when God takes away the soul's health and strength for doing penance. Even though I have mentioned elsewhere the great pain this lack causes, the pain is much more intense here. All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.
Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.
American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting.
Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.
Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.
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