You Know A Moment Is

In Order For Once To Get A Glimpse Of Our European Morality From A Distance, In Order To Compare It With Other Earlier Or Future Moralities, One Must Do As The Traveller Who Wants To Know The Height Of The Towers Of A City: He Leaves The City.

The Strong Individual Loves The Earth So Much He Lusts For Recurrence. He Can Smile In The Face Of The Most Terrible Thought: Meaningless, Aimless Existence Recurring Eternally. The Second Characteristic Of Such A Man Is That He Has The Strength To Recognize - And To Live With The Recognition - That The World Is Valueless In Itself And That All Values Are Human Ones. He Creates Himself By Fashioning His Own Values; He Has The Pride To Live By The Values He Wills.

With Regard To Philosophical Metaphysics, I Always See Increasing Numbers Who Have Attained To The Negative Goal, But As Yet Few Who Climb A Few Rungs Backwards; One Ought To Look Out, Perhaps, Over The Last Steps Of The Ladder, But Not Try To Stand Upon Them.

Since Copernicus, Man Seems To Have Got Himself On An Inclined Plane-now He Is Slipping Faster And Faster Away From The Center Into-what? Into Nothingness? Into A 'penetrating Sense Of His Nothingness?' ... All Science, Natural As Well As Unnatural-which Is What I Call The Self-critique Of Knowledge-has At Present The Object Of Dissuading Man From His Former Respect For Himself, As If This Had Been But A Piece Of Bizarre Conceit.

Everything Which Distinguishes Man From The Animals Depends Upon This Ability To Volatilize Perceptual Metaphors In A Schema, And Thus To Dissolve An Image Into A Concept.