63 Quotes by Walter Kaufmann

The point is not at all that you are found interesting or fascinating instead of being seen as a fellow I. The shock is rather that you are not found interesting or fascinating at all: you are not recognized as an object any more than a subject. You are accepted, if at all, as one to be spoken at and spoken of; but when you are spoken of, the lord of every story will be I.

The self is essentially intangible and must be understood in terms of possibilities, dread, and decisions. When I behold my possibilities, I experience that dread which is “the dizziness of freedom,” and my choice is made in fear and trembling.

All of us have so much more time than we use well. How many hours in a life are spent in a way of which one might be proud, looking back?

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

One can oppose the shallow optimism of so many Western thinkers and yet refuse to negate life.

The difference between great philosophers who disagree is perhaps less considerable than that which separates them from their followers. Members of philosophic schools or coteries live on what others have seen, and the disciple usually applies his master’s insights with a confidence which, most of the time, the master lacked.

The value of a human being, Nietzsche said, does not lie in his usefulness: for it would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful.

In our time equality is confused with conformity – as Nietzsche sees it– and it is taken to involve the renunciation of personal initiative and the demand for a general leveling. Men are losing the ambition to be equally excellent, which involves as the surest means the desire to excel one another in continued competition, and they are becoming resigned to being equally mediocre.

The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepens his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.