Generally attributed to Nietzsche, this is a quotation from Curtis Cate's Friedrich Nietzsche: A Biography (2003) and is the author's interpretation of Nietzsche's Aphorism 221 (Beyond Good and Evil)
Misattributed
“Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale.”
Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.”
Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 7
“Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.”
Testaments Betrayed (1995), p. 7
Context: Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.
The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.
“I consider it immoral to be a supporter of a power system.”
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Zeit Campus;
Quotes 2010s, 2011
Context: [ZEIT Campus: Political engagement like yours is rare among scholars. Are you sometimes furious at the “servants of power” as you say or at professor colleagues who only concentrate on their academic work? ] Chomsky: I consider it immoral to be a supporter of a power system. However that does not mean that I am furious at anyone. Scholars per se do not have deeper political insights than other persons and are not morally superior to others. But they are obligated to help politicians seek and find the truth.
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail
The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert
