A Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Quote Topics

Avoidance Compulsion Indeed Itself Morality Pain Precedes Time Which

Quote Author

Friedrich Nietzsche
German - Philosopher
October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900

The hypothesis I wish to advance is thatthe language of morality is ingrave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have--very largely if not entirely--lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.

Alasdair MacIntyre

There are three things we have to let go of. The first is the compulsion to be successful. Second, is the compulsion to be right-especially theologically right. (That's merely an ego trip, and because of this "need" churches split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos.) Finally, there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control.

Richard Rohr

While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed.

Friedrich Nietzsche

the compulsion to read and write - and it seems to me it should be, even must be, a compulsion - is a bit of mental wiring the species has selected, over time, in order, as the life span increases, to keep us interested in ourselves.

Lorrie Moore

Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.

Mahatma Gandhi

Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. ...I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

Thomas Jefferson

The avoidance of that which causes you pain does not produce enlightenment. It produces avoidance. Religion is the avoidance of pain and suffering.

Frederick Lenz

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

Max Horkheimer

How can you construct a morality if there's no morality inherent in the way things are? You might be able to delude yourself into thinking you had 'created' a morality, but that's all it would be, an illusion.

John Lennox

I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It's a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking.

Edward Norton

One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:-we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.

Friedrich Nietzsche

To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.