Kaitie

“When the gratitude of many to one throws away all shame, we behold fame.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“We say it is "explanation" but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things "cause" and "effect " as it was said we have perfected the conception of becoming but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception. The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete in every case we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow - but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity for example in every chemical process seems a "miracle " the same as before just like all locomotion nobody has "explained" impulse. How could we ever explain We operate only with things which do not exist with lines surfaces bodies atoms divisible times divisible spaces - how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception our conception It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanizing of things that is possible we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality in fact there is a continuum before us from which we isolate a few portions - just as we always observe a motion as isolated points and therefore do not properly see it but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception as things arbitrarily separated and broken - would throw aside the conception of cause and effect and would deny all conditionality.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value."

This unconditional will to truth—what is it? Is it the will not to allow oneself to be deceived? Or is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could be interpreted in the second way, too—if only the special case "I do not want to deceive myself" is subsumed under the generalization "I do not want to deceive." But why not deceive?

But why not allow oneself to be deceived?

Note that the reasons for the former principle belong to an altogether different realm from those for the second. One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility; but one could object in all fairness: How is that? Is wanting not to allow oneself to be deceived really less harmful, less dangerous, less calamitous? What do you know in advance of the character of existence to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of the unconditionally mistrustful or of the unconditionally trusting?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Where has God gone?” [the madman asked] “I shall tell you. We
have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we
done this? How were we able to drink up the seas? Who gave us the
sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we
unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now?

Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually
falling? Backwards, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there
any up or down left? Are we not straying as though through Infinite nothing?

Where is God? God is Dead. Go remains dead. And we have
killed him. How shall we, murders of all murders, console ourselves?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs