Friedrich Nietzche on Christianity
By Hugo
Quotes
-To call the taming of an animal its ‘improvement’ is in our ears almost a joke. Whoever knows what goes on in zoos is doubtful whether the beasts in them are ‘improved’. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, they become sickly beasts through the depressive emotion of fear, through pain, through injuries, through hunger. It is no different with the tamed human being whom the priest has ‘improved’. In the early Middle Ages, when the church was in fact above all a zoo, one . . . improved, for example, the noble Teutons. But what did such a Teuton afterwards look like when he had been ‘improved’ and led into a monastery? Like a caricature of a human being, like an abortion: he had become a sinner; he was in a cage; one had imprisoned him behind nothing but sheer terrifying concepts . . . . There he lay now, sick, miserable, filled with ill-will towards himself, full of hatred for the impulses toward life, full of suspicion of all that was still strong and happy. In short, [he was] a Christian. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-This is precisely why the Jews are the most disastrous people in world history: they have left such a falsified humanity in their wake that even today Christians can think of themselves as anti-Jewish without understanding that they are the ultimate conclusion of Judaism. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-The Jews, that priestly people of ressentiment who knew how to get final satisfaction from their enemies and conquerors through a radical transformation of their values, that is, through an act of the most spiritual revenge. This was appropriate only to a priestly people with the most deeply rooted priestly desire for revenge. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-Christianity, sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a growth on this soil, represents the counter-movement to any morality of breeding, of race, privilege:—it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence. Christianity, the revaluation of all Aryan values, the victory of chandala values, the gospel preached to the poor and base, the general revolt of all the downtrodden, the wretched, the failures, the less favored, against race: the undying chandala hatred as the religion of love. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-The act of most spiritual revenge. It was the Jews who, with awe inspiring consistency, dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God) and to hang onto this inversion with their teeth, the teeth of the most abysmal hatred (the hatred of impotence), saying, “the wretched alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God . . . and you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity, and you shall be in all eternity the unblessed, the accursed, and damned!. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-I call an animal, a species or an individual depraved when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is harmful to it. A history of the ‘higher feelings’, of the ‘ideals of mankind’ [. . .] would almost also constitute an explanation of why man is so depraved. I consider life itself instinct for growth, for continuance, for accumulation of forces, for power: where the will to power is lacking, there is decline. My assertion is that this will is lacking in all the supreme values of mankind — that values of decline, nihilistic values, hold sway under the holiest names. – Friedrich Nietzsche
-I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible charge any prosecutor has ever uttered. To me it is the extremest thinkable form of corruption [. . .] The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity, it has made of every value a disvalue, of every truth a lie, of every kind of integrity a vileness of soul. People still dare talk to me of its ‘humanitarian’ blessings! [. . .] These are the blessings of Christianity! Parasitism as the sole practice of the church . . . of ‘holiness’ draining away all blood, all love, all hope for life; the Beyond as the will to deny reality of every kind; the Cross as a badge of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy there has ever been — a conspiracy against health, beauty, well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself . . . Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them — I can write in letters which make even the blind see . . . call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-Christianity is a revolt of everything that crawls on the ground against everything that is elevated. The Christian movement, as a European movement, was from the start no more than a general uprising of all sorts of outcast and refuse elements (—who now, under cover of Christianity, aspire to power). - Friedrich Nietzsche
-The democratic movement is a result of Christian morality, which has created the idea of the equality of all men. This idea is the root of modern socialism and democracy, which are both secular forms of Christian equality. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-The modern age is characterized by a general degeneration, where the values of Christianity have been secularized and transformed into political and social doctrines. The egalitarian impulse that characterizes modern socialism and democracy has its roots in Christian morality. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-Christianity has taken the side of everything weak, base, and lowly; it has made a virtue of these qualities and has made them a tool for the overthrow of the powerful. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-The Christian movement was the victory of the weak and lowly; it was a revolt against everything noble and strong. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-Christianity is a rebellion against the natural instincts of life and strength. It is the weapon of the oppressed against the strong, a means for the weak to overcome the powerful. - Friedrich Nietzsche
-The Christian concept of God—God as a sick man, God as a spider, God as a vilely injured and overthrown man—is merely a projection of the sick and impotent instinct of the Christian. To talk of the will to power in connection with such a concept is a contradiction.- Friedrich Nietzsche
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