Kenneth

“Christianity is called the religion of compassion [Mitleid].—compassion stands in antithesis to the tonic emotions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: it has a depressive eff ect. One loses force when one has compassion. Th e loss of force which life has already sustained through suff ering is increased and multiplied even further by compassion. Suffering itself becomes contagious through compassion... its morally dangerous character appears in a much clearer light. Compassion on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction, it defends life’s disinherited and condemned; through the abundance of the ill-constituted of all kinds which it retains in life it gives life itself a gloomy and questionable aspect. One has ventured to call compassion a virtue (—in every noble morality it counts as weakness—)... compassion is practical nihilism... compassion persuades to nothingness!... [compassion is] hostile to life. Schopenhauer [therefore] was hostile to life: therefore compassion became for him a virtue.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the actual crime itself. Judicial murder is immeasurably more horrible than one committed by a robber. Someone killed by a robber, knifed at night in forest or somewhere, certainly keeps hoping for a rescue right up to the last second. There have been instances of people whose throats have been cut still hoping for rescue right up to the last second. There have been instances of people whose throats have been cut still hoping, or running away, or pleading for their lives. But all this final hope, which makes dying ten times easier is taken away by that certain; the sentence is pronounced and the whole agony resides in the fact that there’s no escape. There is no greater torture in the world than that. Fetch a soldier and stand him right in front of a cannon during a battle and fire at him, he’ll go on hoping; but read out a certain death sentence to that same soldier and he’ll go off his head or bust into tears. Who can say that human nature can bear such a thing like that without going mad? Why this disgusting pointless, unnecessary mockery? Perhaps there exists a man who has had his sentence read out to him and been allowed to suffer before being told: “Be off, you’ve been pardoned.” That man could tell you perhaps. Christ himself spoke of such agony and terror. No, a man should not be treated so!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice? — Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak — Christianity ....”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ

“I like people talking nonsense. Talking nonsense is humanity's only privilege over the rest of creation. If you talk nonsense, you'll find your way to the truth! Talking nonsense is what makes me human. No one ever found his way to the truth without first getting things wrong fourteen times, or even a hundred and fourteen times, and that's a good thing in its way; the trouble is we're not even capable of getting things wrong with our own brains! You can talk nonsense to me, if it's nonsense of your own, and I'll kiss you for it. Talking nonsense of your own-that's almost better than talking someone else's truth; in the first case you're human, in the second you're nothing but a parrot! Truth won't go away, but life can get choked up; we've seen that happen. Well, what are we now? In science, progress, thought, invention, ideals, desires, liberalism, judgement, experience, and all, all, all, all, all of it, we're every one of us, without exception, still stuck in the first, pre-preparatory class of high school! We've got fond of living off other people's ideas, and now we're addicted to it! Isn't that right? Isn't it?' cried Razumikhin, shaking and squeezing both ladies' arms. 'Isn't that so?”
― Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment