Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge UP, 1997, p. 86.
Describing his first meeting Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
In his effort to rid the University of the vestiges of racism from the school’s disgraceful segregation riots of the 1960s, he found that the emotional reaction and the anger that developed over symbols was much greater than that which was the result of substantive changes. The Confederate Flag made Blacks and some whites very angry that it was flown and exhibited in many places at the university. It was an insult to Blacks as it extolled not only slavery but an entire rebellion to keep them in subhuman conditions. Some whites saw it as symbols of treason and disloyalty to the United States which should not be celebrated at a state university. At the same time, whites saw the Chancellor’s efforts to diminish the exhibiting of the Confederate flag as an insult to their ancestors, and the values of many Americans and an infringement on their freedom of expression.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900.
