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Quotes of the Day for 15 October 2003 - Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born at R&ouml;cken bei L&uuml;tzen, Prussia on this day in 1844, the 49th birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. The boy was named after the king, and in Ecce Homo Nietzsche wrote, "There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day to my birth; my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing." His father died five years later, and he was raised by his mother, two sisters, and two aunts. He studied at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig before he was drafted into the artillery, he was discharged after being thrown from a horse. He was appointed a professor at the University of Basel where he began his writing. There's much to like and dislike in Nietzsche's work, although it's quite possible that the parts the Nazis liked so much had been edited by his anti-Semitic sister.

Arrogance in persons of merit affronts us more than arrogance in those without merit: Merit itself is an affront.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of those diseases is man.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
     - All from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900

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