QuoteProject
This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!
Friedrich Nietzsche
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote implies that beauty can overshadow intelligence, suggesting that societal perceptions may limit the development of one's intellect.

Friedrich Nietzsche's quote reflects on the dichotomy between beauty and intelligence. It suggests that societal emphasis on physical beauty can hinder the intellectual growth of individuals, particularly women. By implying that if the woman were not beautiful, her cleverness would have had more room to flourish, Nietzsche critiques how society values physical appearance over mental capability and how this value system may confine one's potential.

Themes

BeautyIntelligenceSocietyPerceptionGender

In practice

Example use cases

In a debate about gender roles, this quote could highlight the biases women face regarding their capabilities.

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
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 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

As a social concept, 'white' is profound in its meaning. It means people who either come from or appear to come from Europe, but it's necessarily a construct of oppression.
Robin DiangeloRead
Can a man of perception respect himself at all?
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.
D. H. LawrenceRead
Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?
Sylvia PlathRead
That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops.
Charles BukowskiRead
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.