Friedrich H C3 B6lderlin Quotes

Everything that I have known
You'll write to me to remind
Me of, and likewise I shall do
The whole past I'll recount to you ~ Friedrich Holderlin

If these d'Herelle bodies were really genes, fundamentally like our chromosome genes, they would give us an utterly new angle from which to attack the gene problem. They are filterable, to some extent isolable, can be handled in test-tubes, and their properties, as shown by their effects on the bacteria, can then be studied after treatment. It would be very rash to call these bodies genes, and yet at present we must confess that there is no distinction known between the genes and them. Hence we can not categorically deny that perhaps we may be able to grind genes in a mortar and cook them in a beaker after all. Must we geneticists become bacteriologists, physiological chemists and physicists, simultaneously with being zoologists and botanists? Let us hope so. ~ Hermann Joseph Muller

When Friedrich Nietzsche mocked Immanuel Kant for having "discovered a moral faculty in man", he inadvertently resolved Kant's dilemma of being unable to identify what exactly constituted his "moral law" for fear of offending against a charge of empiricism from the likes of David Hume. ~ Joseph B.H. McMillan

Und nicht wahr, wenn man ihn zwänge, in das Licht selbst zu sehen, so würde er Schmerzen an den Augen haben, davonlaufen und sich wieder jenen Schattengegenständen zuwenden, die er ansehen kann, und würde dabei bleiben, diese wären wirklich deutlicher als die, welche er gezeigt bekam?

And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him? ~ Plato

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on earth. ~ Linji Yixuan

Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. There are moments when his cogitations are relatively more respectable than usual, but even at their climaxes they never reach anything properly describable as the level of serious thought. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before and by thousands. ~ H.L. Mencken

I told you. There's nothing heroic here, nothing for the writer's pen. I had thoughts like, It's not wartime, why should I have to risk myself while someone else is sleeping with my wife? Why me again, and not him? To be honest, I didn't see any heroes there. I saw nutcases, who didn't care about their own lives, and I had enough craziness myself, but it wasn't necessary. I also have medals and awards - but that's because I wasn't afraid of dying. I didn't care! It was even something of an out. They'd have buried me with honors. And the government would have paid for it. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

And it is characteristic of the devil to be recognized too late. ~ Helene Cixous

Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact. ~ H.L. Mencken

Do you know what the foundation of mathematics is?" I ask. "The foundation of
mathematics is numbers. If anyone asked me what makes me truly happy, I would
say: numbers. Snow and ice and numbers. And do you know why?"
He splits the claws with a nutcracker and pulls out the meat with curved tweezers.
"Because the number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers.
The ones that are whole and positive. The numbers of a small child. But human
consciousness expands. The child discovers a sense of longing, and do you know
what the mathematical expression is for longing?"
He adds cream and several drops of orange juice to the soup.
"The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing
something. And human consciousness expands and grows even more, and the child
discovers the in between spaces. Between stones, between pieces of moss on the
stones, between people. And between numbers. And do you know what that leads
to? It leads to fractions. Whole numbers plus fractions produce rational numbers.
And human consciousness doesn't stop there. It wants to go beyond reason. It adds
an operation as absurd as the extraction of roots. And produces irrational numbers."
He warms French bread in the oven and fills the pepper mill.
"It's a form of madness.' Because the irrational numbers are infinite. They can't be
written down. They force human consciousness out bey ~ Peter Høeg

Now and again an echo of Chopin's music rings in my ears, and this much you absorb me that, at such moments I always think of you and lose myself in meditating about possibilities. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Always look on the bright side of the abyss ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Talking much about oneself may be a way of hiding oneself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Priests ... these turkey-cocks of God. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Balard did not discover bromine, rather bromine discovered Balard.

{Comment on Antoine Jérôme Balard, discoverer of bromine.} ~ Justus Von Liebig

The man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness - he must come one day. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you want to study yourself, look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people, look into your own heart. ~ Friedrich Schiller

One should steal only where one cannot rob. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Man will desire oblivion rather than not desire at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Humor is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We do not escape our boundaries or our innermost being. We do not change. It is true we may be transformed, but we always walk within our boundaries, within the marked-off circle. ~ Ernst Junger

A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and evil of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Basic insight regarding the nature of decadence: it's supposed causes are its consequences. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It's a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez's many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez's direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical. ~ Naomi Klein

Unbelief does nothing but darken and destroy. It makes the world a moral desert, where no divine footsteps are heard, where no angels ascend and descend, where no living hand adorns the fields, feeds the birds of heaven, or regulates events. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher

I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity. ~ George Carlin

I despise the zeal of the devout, but I have never said that the One is two.
I am not one of those for whom faith is simply fear of judgement. How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of the creation and how perfectly ordered it is, at man, the most beautiful work of the Creator, his brain thirsting for knowledge, his heart for love, and his senses, all his senses alert or gratified. ~ Amin Maalouf

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What do you think most humane ?-To spare a person shame. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity is religion for the executioner. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There is so much blood on this chicken-killer's hands, a little more on his business suit won't hurt. ~ Bruce Friedrich

And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Fate hath no voice but the heart's impulse. ~ Friedrich Schiller

There are times I almost believe that anything possible to be done should be done, not just because it's good or makes sense, simply because it's possible. ~ Sandor Marai

In true love it is the soul that envelops the body. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A married philosopher is a comic character. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The purpose of criminal law is to punish the enemies of those in power. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek