| "To harm stupidity.— Surely, the faith preached so stubbornly and with so much conviction, that egoism is reprehensible, has on the whole harmed egoism (while benefiting, as I shall repeat a hundred times, the herd instinct!), above all, by depriving egoism of its good conscience and bidding us to find in it the true source of all unhappiness. "Your selfishness is the misfortune of your life"—that was preached for thousands of years and harmed, as I have said, selfishness and deprived it of much spirit, much cheerfulness, much sensitivity, much beauty, it made selfishness stupid and ugly and poisoned it!— The ancient philosophers taught that the main source of misfortune was something very different: beginning with Socrates, these thinkers never wearied of preaching: "Your thoughtlessness and stupidity, the way you live according to the rule, your submission to your neighbor's opinion is the reason why you so rarely achieve happiness,—we thinkers, as thinkers, are the happiest of all." Let us not decide here whether this sermon against stupidity had better reasons on its side than did the sermon against selfishness; what is certain, however, is that it deprived stupidity of its good conscience:—these philosophers harmed stupidity."
-Nietzsche
"I really like this jacket, but the sleeves are much too long..."
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results... |