New struggles - After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave - a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we - we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. 167

Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type. 168

Origin of knowledge - over immense period of time the intellect produced nothing but errors…Such erroneous articles of faith, which were continually inherited, until they became almost part of the basic endowment of the species, include the following: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things…that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. It was only very late that such propositions were denied and doubted; it was only very late that truth emerged - as the weakest form of knowledge…Thus the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life. 169

Cause and effect - "Explanation" is what we call it, but it is "description" that distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. Our descriptions are better - we do not explain any more than our predecessors. 172

The four errors - Man has been educated by his errors. First, he always saw himself only incompletely; second, he endowed himself with fictitious attributes; third, he placed himself in a false order of rank in relation to animals and nature; fourth, he invented ever new tables of goods and always accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditional: as a result of this, now one and now another human impulse and state held first place and was ennobled because it was esteemed so highly. If we removed the effects of these four errors, we should also remove humanity, humanness, and "human dignity." 174

Herd remorse - Today one feels responsible only for one's will and actions, and one finds one's pride in oneself. All our teachers of law start from this sense of self and pleasure in the individual, as if this had always been the fount of law. But during the longest period of human past nothing was more terrible than to feel that one stood by oneself. To be alone, to experience things by oneself, neither to obey or to rule, to be an individual - that was not a pleasure but a punishment; one was sentenced to "individuality." Freedom of thought was considered discomfort itself. While we experience law and submission as compulsion and loss, it was egoism that was formerly experienced as something painful and as real misery. To be a self and to esteem oneself according to one's own weight and measure - that offended taste in those days. An inclination to do this would have been considered madness; for being alone was associated with every misery and fear…There is no point on which we have learned to think and feel more differently. 175

In the horizon of the infinite - we have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us - indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of the cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom - and there is no longer any "land." 181

The conditions for God - "God himself cannot exist without wise people," said Luther with good reason. But "God can exist even less without unwise people" - that our good Luther did not say. 185

Christ's error - The founder of Christianity thought there was nothing of which men suffered more than their sins. That was his error - the error of one who felt that he was without sin and who lacked firsthand experience. Thus his soul grew full of that wonderful and fantastic compassion for a misery that even among his people, who had invented sin, was rarely a very great misery. - but the Christians have found a way of vindicating their master since then and of sanctifying his error by making it "come true." 189

Too Jewish - If God wished to become an object of love, he should have given up judging and justice first of all; a judge, even a merciful judge, is no object of love. The founder of Christianity was not refined enough in his feelings at this point - being a Jew. 190

Too Oriental - What? A god who loves men, provided only that they believe in him, and who casts an evil eye and threats upon anyone who does not believe in this love? What? A love encapsulated in if-clauses attributed to an almighty god? A love that has not even mastered the feelings of horror and vindictiveness? How oriental this is! "If I love you, is that your concern?" is a sufficient critique of the whole Christianity. 190

The great advantage of polytheism - For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it its own law…the wonderful art and gift of creating gods - polytheism…[in antiquity] one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms; one god was not considered a denial of another god, nor blasphemy against him. It was here that the luxury of individuals were first permitted; it was here that one first honored the rights of individuals….Monotheism, on the other hand, this rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human type - the faith in one normal god beside whom there are only pseudo-gods - was perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity. 191-92

We may always infer that a civilization is really high when powerful and domineering natures have little influence and create only sects. 195

Being profound and seeming profound - those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water. 202 [unlike the misanthropic appearance of this fragment, it in fact criticizes the philosopher and urges him to be more clear for the crowd]

Apart - Parliamentarianism - that is, public permission to choose between five basic political opinions - flatters and wins the favor of all those who would like to seem independent and individual, as if they fought for their opinions. Ultimately, however, it is indifferent whether the herd is commanded to have one opinion or permitted to have five. Whoever deviates from the five public opinions and stands apart will always have the whole herd against him. 202

Thoughts - Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier, and simpler. 203

The thinker - He is a thinker; that means, he knows how to make things simpler than they are. 205

Against those who praise - A: "One is praised only by one's peers." B: "Yes, and whoever praises you says: I am your peer." 205

Against many a defense - The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. 205

Limits of our hearing - One hears only those questions for which one is able to find answers. 206

The way to happiness - A sage asked a fool about the way to happiness. The fool answered instantly as if he had merely been asked the way to the nearest town: "Admire yourself and live in the street." "No," replied the sage, "you are asking too much; it is quite sufficient to admire oneself." The fool shot back: "But how can one constantly admire without constantly feeling contempt?" 209

Dearth of silence - His whole nature fails to persuade; that is because he has never remained silent about any of his good deeds. 212

Dreams - Either we have no dreams or out dreams are interesting. We should learn to arrange our waking life the same way: nothing or interesting. 212

At the sea - I would not build a house for myself, and I count it part of my good fortune that I do not own a house. But if I had to, then I should build it as some of the Romans did - right into the sea. I should not mind sharing a few secrets with this beautiful monster. 214

Always at home - One day we reach our goal, and now point with pride to the long travels we undertook to reach it. In fact, we were not even aware of traveling. But we got so far because we fancied at every point that we were at home. 216

From paradise - "Good and evil are the prejudices of God" - said the snake. 218

Sub specie aeterni [from the point of view of eternity] - A: "You are moving away faster and faster from the living; soon they will strike your name from their rolls." - B; "That is the only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." - A: "What privilege?" - B: "To die no more." 218

In what do you believe? - In this, that the weight of all things must be determined anew. 219

And yet silence will soon descend on all these noisy, living, life-thirsty people. How his shadow stands even now behind everyone, as his dark fellow traveler! It is always like the last moment before the departure of an emigrant ship: people have more to say to one another than ever before, the hour presses, the ocean and its empty silence waits impatiently behind all the noise - so covetous, so certain of its prey! And all and everyone believes that what has been is nothing or little, the immediate future is all: and thus this haste, this clamor, this outshouting and overreaching each other. Everyone wants to be the first into this future - and yet death and the silence of death is the only certain thing and the thing common to all in this future! How strange that this sole certainty and common possession has almost no power at all over men and that they are at the furthest remove from feeling themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy that men do not want at all to think the thought of death! I should like very much to do something that would make the thought of life even a hundred times more appealing to them.
The Gay Science, section 278 (page 225)

Delights in blindness - "My thoughts," said the wanderer to his shadow, "should show me where I stand; but they should not betray to me where I am going. I love my ignorance of the future and do not wish to perish of impatience and of tasting promised things ahead of time." 230

Embark! - Consider how every individual is affected by an overall philosophical justification of his way of living and thinking: he experiences it as a sun that shines especially for him and bestows warmth, blessings, and fertility on him; it makes him independent of praise and blame, self-sufficient, rich, liberal with happiness and good will; incessantly it fashions evil into good leads all energies to bloom and ripen, and does not permit the petty weeds of grief and chagrin to come up at all. In the end one exclaims: How I wish that many such new suns were yet to be created! Those who are evil or unhappy and the exceptional human being - all these should also have their philosophy, their good right, their sunshine! What is needful is not pity for them. We must learn to abandon this arrogant fancy, however long humanity has hitherto spent learning and practicing it. What these people need is not confession, conjuring of souls, and forgiveness of sins; what is needful is a new justice! And a new watchword. And new philosophers. The moral earth, too, is round. The moral earth, too, has its antipodes. The antipodes, too, have the right to exist. There is yet another world to be discovered - and more than one. Embark, philosophers! 232

To those who preach morals - I do not wish to promote any morality, but to those who do I give this advice: If you wish to deprive the best things and states of all honor and worth, then go on talking about them as you have been doing. Place them at the head of your morality and talk from morning to night of the happiness of virtue, the composure of the soul, of justice and immanent retribution. The way you are going about it, all these good things will eventually have popularity and clamor of the streets on their sides; but at the same time all the gold that was on them will have been worn off by so much handling, and all the gold inside will have turned to lead. Truly, you are masters of alchemy in reverse: the devaluation of what is most valuable. Why don't you make the experiment of trying another prescription to keep from attaining the opposite of your goal as you have done hitherto? Deny these good things, withdraw the mob's acclaim from them as well as their easy currency; make them once again concealed secrets of solitary souls; say that morality is something forbidden. That way you might win over for these things the kind of people who alone matter: I mean those who are heroic. But to that end there has to be a quality that inspire fear and not, as hitherto, nausea. Hasn't the time come to say of morality what Master Eckhart said: "I ask God to rid me of God." 234

…
My dog - I have given a name to my pain and call it "dog." It is just as faithful, just as obtrusive and shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as any other dog - and I can scold it and vent my bad mood on it, as others do with their dogs, servants and wives. 250

New domestic animals - I want to have my lion and eagle near me so that I always have hints and omens that help me to know how great or small my strength is. Must I look down upon them today and feel fear? And will the hour return when they look up to me - in fear? 250

The meaning of knowing - Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! ["not to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand" Tractatus Politicus] Says Spinoza as simply and sublimely as is his wont. Yet in the last analysis, what else is this intelligere than the form in which we come to feel the other three at once? One result of the different and mutually opposed desires to laugh, lament and curse? Before knowledge is possible, each of these instincts must first have presented its one-sided view of the thing or the event; after this comes the fight of these one-sided views, and occasionally this results in a mean, one grows calm, one finds all three sides right, and there is a kind of justice and a contract; for by virtue of justice and a contract of all theses instincts can maintain their existence and assert their rights against each other. Since only the last scenes of reconciliation and the final accounting at the end of this long process rise to out consciousness, we suppose that intelligere must be something conciliatory, just and good - something that stands essentially opposed to the instincts, while it is actually nothing but a certain behavior of the instincts toward one another.
For the longest time, conscious thought was considered thought itself. Only now does the truth dawn on us that by far the greatest part of our spirit's activity remains unconscious and unfelt. But I suppose that these instincts which are here contending against one another understand very well how to make themselves felt by, and how to hurt, one another. This may well be the source of that sudden and violent exhaustion that afflicts all thinkers (it is the exhaustion on a battlefield). Indeed, there may be occasions of concealed heroism in our warring depth, but certainly nothing divine that eternally rests in itself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, especially that of the philosopher, is the least vigorous and therefore also the relatively mildest and calmest form of thinking; and thus precisely philosophers are most apt to be led astray about the nature of knowledge. 262