Professor Quotes

“There are highly gifted spirits who are always infertile simply because, owing to a weakness in temperament, they are too impatient to wait out their pregnancy to term.”

“As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris.”

“I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom.”

“Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing, sanguinary, insatiate monster.”

“Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy”

“The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.”

“The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.”

“The final reward of the dead - to die no more”

“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”

“The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds.”

“The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.”

“Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.”

“A sure way to irritate people and to put evil thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting a long time. This makes them immoral.”

“One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.”

“Plato was a bore.”

“When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.”

“THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly.”

“That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.”

“A beautiful woman seductively dressed will never catch cold no matter how low-cut her gown.”

“The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill-temper.”

“Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture.”

“A real fox calls sour not only those grapes that he cannot reach but also those that he has reached and taken away from others.”

“The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.”

“Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody's equal.”

“The best way to give assistance to those who are deeply embarrassed and to calm them down is to praise them decisively.”