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Nevertheless. -- however credit and debit balances may
stand: at its present state as a specific individual science the
awakening of moral observation has become necessary, and
mankind can no longer be spared the cruel sight of the moral
dissecting table and its knives and forceps... the older
philosophy... has, with paltry evasions, always avoided
investigation of the origin and history of the moral sensations.
With what consequences is now very clearly apparent, since
it has been demonstrated in many instances how the errors of
the greatest philosophers usually have their point of
departure in a false explanation of certain human actions and
sensations; ...a false ethics is erected, religion and
mythological monsters are then in turn called to buttress it,
and the shadow of these dismal spirits in the end falls even
across physics and the entire perception of the world.
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.37, R.J.
Hollingdale transl.
Morality makes stupid.-- Custom represents the experiences
of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and
harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to
these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the
indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a
hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the
correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance
to the development of new and better customs: it makes
stupid.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 19, R.J.
Hollingdale transl.
Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has
always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did
happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this
fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; - history
treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently
became good men!
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 20, R.J.
Hollingdale transl.
What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants
to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the
old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in
all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and
getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But
eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil
must come again and again.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s. 4, Walter
Kaufmann
transl.
Suspicious.-- To admit a belief merely because it is a custom
- but that means to be dishonest, cowardly, lazy! - And so
could dishonesty, cowardice and laziness be the
preconditions for morality?
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 101, R.J. Hollingdale
transl.
... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the
morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our
having found so little of it and having had to seek about for
imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the
wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the
virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds
of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 468, R.J. Hollingdale
transl
It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability
every evil inclination has to place itself under such great
restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the
procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a
martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He
who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is
at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere
only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 499, R.J. Hollingdale
transl
Where the good begins.-- Where the poor power of the eye
can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has
become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the
feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness
excites all those impulses which had been threatened and
limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of
comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more
extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the
common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and
grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s. 53, Walter Kaufmann
transl.