On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

 

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

 

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

 

Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

 

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

 

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

 

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage

 

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

 

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

 

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted

 

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons

 

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions

 

Enduring habits I hate... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits

 

Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.

 

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star

 

What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do

 

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger

 

To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

 

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness

 

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed

I'm not sure what I expected when I saw "Nietzsche" on the main forum, but I'm glad Bill tossed it up.

There was one quote in particular that leapt out of the screen at me:

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the priviledge of owning yourself."

Nietzsche is not someone I've read any of and I don't know where such a view as above sits in his world view, but as soon as I read it two very different figures immediately came to mind.

The first was  Gang of Four member Wang Hung-wen who, if I remember correctly, said that to swim against the tide was a revolutionary principle.

The other was the American psychiatrist and psychotherapist Irvin Yalom, particularly known for his group work, who is a major fan of Nietzsche's philosophy.

The Wang Hung-wen/Nietzsche connection resonates politically in ways that most/all who contribute to this site can readily identify with. This relates to both the 60's and 70's period when most of us first got involved in revolutionary politics, and now when our position is lonely though not yet frightening. It's the 'been there done that and still doing it' factor.

The Yalom/Nietzsche connection relates to work. I use alot of Yalom's ideas in the group-work I do and the above quote would sum up a major plank of Yalom's approach to group psychotherapy  perfectly.

Yalom is a particularly strong advocate of personal responsibility, (the struggle to own/ reclaim/keep on owning oneself), in generating change and ameliorating self defeating behaviours or patterns of relating to others.

Nietzsche's observation has currency in very different situations although both the ones that occured to me involve how we cede responsibility for ourselves, including our capacity to think critically and autonomously in group situations or struggle against this pressure.

Not sure what you mean by the been there done that and still doing it factor.

Does sound frightening though!

Seriously, not being overwhelmed by the tribe isn't enough. Being lonely and sometimes frightened may be not be too high a price for not being owned by others. But that's hardly a privilege these days. Not only slavery, but also feudalism and capitalism are historically obsolete.

We should be leading the tribe to victory.

Those of us involved in revolutionary politics in the 60s and 70s were in fact trying to overthrow our rulers. That was fun. It wasn't lonely and frightening. Not aiming to overthrow anybody in particular is what's making us lonely and frightened - and is a symptom of being overhwelmed by the tribe and not being true to ourselves.