Quotessence
Home / Books / On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

Book by Friedrich Nietzsche · 3 quotes · Belief, Dream, Epistimology

Filter quotes by topic

AllBeliefDreamEpistimologyHumilityLiesMetaphorNietzscheOriginSeeing The WorldTruth

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense Quotes

“What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”

TruthBeliefLiesMetaphorNietzscheOriginEpistimology
Book:On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
Create image

“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.”

Humility
Book:On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
Create image

“When every tree can suddenly speak as a nymph, when a god in the shape of a bull can drag away maidens, when even the goddess Athena herself is suddenly seen in the company of Peisastratus driving through the market place of Athens with a beautiful team of horses - and this is what the honest Athenian believed - then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment, and all of nature swarms around man as it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods, who were merely amusing themselves by deceiving men in all these shapes.”

DreamSeeing The World
Book:On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
Create image