Mina L > Mina's Quotes

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
― Freidrich Neitzsche

“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”
― Nietzsche

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

“…if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.”
― Plato, The Republic and Other Works

“One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe.... Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.”
― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
― Erich Fromm

“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”
― Fromm, Eric, The Art of Loving

“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.”
― Erich Fromm

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Become who you are!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

“It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.”
― Erich Fromm

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”
― Erich Fromm

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
― Erich Fromm

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. ”
― Erich Fromm

“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself. ”
― Erich Fromm

“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.”
― Erich Fromm

“The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche