Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Anyone who can look me in the eye and say they prefer the story of Moses or Jesus or Mohammed to the life of Socrates is intellectually defective.

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence.

The Money Power! It is the greatest power on earth; and it is arrayed against Labour. No other power that is or ever was can be named with it...it attacks us through the Press - a monster with a thousand lying tongues, a beast surpassing in foulness any conceived by the mythology that invented dragons, were wolves, harpies, ghouls and vampires. It thunders against us from innumerable platforms and pulpits. The mystic machinery of the churches it turns into an engine of wrath for our destruction. Yes, so far as we are concerned, the headquarters of the Money Power is Britain. But the Money Power is not a British institution; it is cosmopolitan. It is of no nationality, but of all nationalities. It dominates the world. The Money Power has corrupted the faculties of the human soul, and tampered with the sanity of the human intellect...

The final goal of all human endeavor is the development of the human soul.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.

I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people.

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.

In the Bible, there is no mention of the Trinity. . . . We get to know God, not through our proud philosophical concepts, but through Christ.

Science never makes an advance until philosophy authorizes it to do so.

Men have discovered other philosophical and ethical systems, but they have not found another Jesus Christ. No one in history can match Him.

Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

Rousseau was mad but influential; Hume was sane but had no followers.

Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?” “No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Tormé and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days,” Komatsu said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?

Your eyes flashed fire into my soul. I immediately read the words of Dostoyevsky and Karl Marx, and in the words of Albert Schweitzer, I FANCY YOU!

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.

Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, F?nelon -- that is to say, some of the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages -- have been believers in Jesus Christ; and the great Cond?, when dying, repeated these noble words, "Yes, I shall see God as He is, face to face!".

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

Thousands of years of ideological, philosophical and practical decisions were made. They altered the surface of the earth, the coordinates of our souls. For every one of those decisions, maybe there's another decision that could have been made, should have been made.

The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.

As Commander-in-Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength...an aid in attaining the highest aspiration of the human soul.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.

The core of original sin, then is LOT - Lack of Trust. Or, it could be considered an innate inability to adequately value ourselves. Label it a 'negative self-image,' but do not say that the central core of the human soul is wickedness. ... positive Christianity does not hold to human depravity, but to human inability.

Institutional Christianity has had clear secular benefits to American life for hundreds of years. It's played both a prophetic role in terms of generating moral critiques of American excesses, and so on, and also a communal role, in terms of building community as the country moved westward to the role my own Catholic Church played in assimilating generations of immigrants.