Quotes from book
On the Genealogy of Morality

Friedrich Nietzsche Original title Zur Genealogie der Moral (German, 1887)

On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic is an 1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated essays that expand and follow through on concepts Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil . The three Abhandlungen trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to confronting "moral prejudices", specifically those of Christianity and Judaism.


Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Now, when suffering is always the first of the arguments marshalled against life, as its most questionable feature, it is salutary to remember the times when people made the opposite assessment, because they could not do without making people suffer and saw first-rate magic in it, a veritable seductive lure to life. Perhaps pain - I say this to comfort the squeamish - did not hurt as much then as it does now; at least, a doctor would be justified in assuming this, if he had treated a Negro (taken as a representative for primeval man) for serious internal inflammations which would drive the European with the stoutest constitution to distraction; - they do not do that to Negroes.”

The curve of human capacity for pain actually does seem to sink dramatically and almost precipitously beyond the first ten thousand or ten million of the cultural elite; and for myself, I do not doubt that in comparison with one night of pain endured by a single, hysterical blue stocking, the total suffering of all the animals who have been interrogated by the knife in scientific research is as nothing.
Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“O, what nowadays does science not conceal! How much, at least, it is meant to conceal!”

Essay 3, Aphorism 23
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Ascetic ideals reveal so many bridges to independence that a philosopher is bound to rejoice and clap his hands when he hears the story of all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into some desert.”

Es sind im asketischen Ideale so viele Brücken zur Unabhängigkeit angezeigt, dass ein Philosoph nicht ohne ein innerliches Frohlocken und Händeklatschen die Geschichte aller jener Entschlossnen zu hören vermag, welche eines Tages Nein sagten zu aller Unfreiheit und in irgend eine Wüste giengen.
Essay 3, Aphorism 7, W. Kaufmann, trans., Basic Writings of Nietzsche (1992), p. 543
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“If a temple is to be erected, a temple must be destroyed.”

Essay 2, Section 24
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

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