The Will to Power - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche  ## Metadata - Author: **Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche** - Full Title: The Will to Power - Category: #books ## Highlights - The great Methodologists: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste Comte. (Location 196) - The most valuable knowledge is always discovered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods. (Location 197) - Tags: #rationality #favorite #philosophy - The metaphysico-logical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc. etc., draws its convincing character from our habit of regarding all our actions as the result of our will: so that the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of changes.—But there is no such thing as will (Location 340) - The whole apparatus of knowledge is an abstracting and simplifying apparatus— (Location 414) - All human knowledge is either experience or mathematics. (Location 653) - The teaching of Being, of things, and of all those constant entities, is a hundred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. (Location 707) - Tags: #philosophy - There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes—therefore there must be many kinds of "truths," and consequently there can be no truth. (Location 712) - Tags: #favorite #wisdom #epistemology - "Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c'est que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et à plus forte raison quand il écrit." (Location 735) - We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme—we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. (Location 768) - Tags: #philosophy - The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known.—It is not a search for causes, but for the familiar. (Location 793) - Tags: #favorite #rationality #philosophy - as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, (Location 841) - Tags: #rationality - That is to say; there is nothing without other things. That is to say; there is no "thing-in-itself." (Location 884) - Brave and creative men never make pleasure and pain ultimate questions—they (Location 1046) - Wisdom is an attempt to overcome the perspective valuations (i.e. the "will to power"): it is a principle which is both unfriendly to Life, and also decadent; a symptom in the case of the Indians, etc.; weakness of the power of appropriation. (Location 1320) - it is merely a vital condition under which, alone, a living organism can preserve itself and prosper: a great solid belt of ignorance must stand about you. (Location 1324) - Becoming is inventing, willing, self-denying, self-overcoming; no subject but an action, it places things, it is creative, no "causes and effects." (Location 1354) - Tags: #favorite - The uselessness of old ideals for the interpretation of all that takes place, once their bestial origin and utility have been recognised, they are, moreover, all hostile to life. (Location 1359) - All the idealism of mankind, hitherto, is on the point of turning into Nihilism—may be shown to be a belief in absolute worthlessness, i.e. purposelessness. (Location 1362) - Tags: #philosophy #favorite - Perspectivity is only a complex form, of specificness. My idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its power (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. But inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it concludes by coming to terms with those (by "combining" with those) which are sufficiently related to it—and thus they conspire together for power. And the process continues. (Location 1496) - The fundamental phenomena: innumerable individuals are sacrificed for the sake of a few, in order to make the few possible.— (Location 1849) - Man has one terrible and fundamental wish; he desires power, and this impulse, which is called freedom, must be the longest restrained. Hence ethics has instinctively aimed at such an education as shall restrain the desire for power; thus our morality slanders the would-be tyrant, and glorifies charity, patriotism, and the ambition of the herd. (Location 2205) - all great men have been criminals (Location 2302) - There is no relationship between work done and money received; the individual should, according to his kind, be so placed as to perform the highest that is compatible with his powers. (Location 2439) - Closely related thereto is the "genius." The "great adventurers and criminals" and all great men, the most healthy in particular, have always been sick at certain periods of their lives— (Location 3391) - We should substitute morality by the will to our own ends, and consequently to the means to them. (Location 3570) - Tags: #philosophy #ethic - For a personality to be possible, timely isolation and the necessity for an existence of offence and defence, are prerequisites; (Location 3614) - Tags: #wisdom - a man should look upon himself with an adventurous spirit; he should experiment with himself and run risks with himself— (Location 4038) - He knows that he cannot reveal himself to anybody: he thinks it bad taste to become familiar; and as a rule he is not familiar when people think he is. When he is not talking to his soul, he wears a mask. He would rather lie than tell the truth, because lying requires more spirit and will. (Location 4124) - Tags: #mind - We must not let ourselves be seduced by blue eyes and heaving breasts: greatness of soul has absolutely nothing romantic about it. And unfortunately nothing whatever amiable either. (Location 4254) - Tags: #favorite - The more lofty philosophical man who is surrounded by loneliness, not because he wishes to be alone, but because he is what he is, and cannot find his equal... (Location 4266) - Tags: #mind - to hear the inferior and the poor in spirit having their say is a terrible ear-splitting torment for him who knows and trembles at the thought, (Location 4286) - Tags: #philosophy - He grows stronger under the misfortunes which threaten to annihilate him. (Location 4340) - Tags: #rationality - He is always in his own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with Nature. (Location 4343) - Tags: #philosophy - amor fati. (Location 4604) - The two greatest philosophical points of view (both discovered by Germans). (a) That of becoming and that of evolution. (b) That based upon the values of existence (but the wretched form of German pessimism must first be overcome!)— (Location 4726)