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The primary ambition of Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge is … to demonstrate that ‘truths’ are fictions masking moral commitments.

— John Carroll Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

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Ambition

More quotes by John Carroll

A teleology directed to material ends has been substituted for the lust for adventure, variety, and play.

Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

By punishing the criminal the moral man hopes to dissuade the evil imprisoned in his own breast from escaping. Fear of self is projected in hatred of the immoral other.

Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

Education is the strongest weapon available for restricting the questions people ask, controlling what they think, and ensuring that they get their thoughts ‘from above’.

Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

Whereas Marx’s vision of homo faber becomes inoperative within social chains, Stirner’s man makes his own freedom.

Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

Men become utilitarian out of fear of the alternative—the chaos of tangled or tepid desires, of rootlessness and boredom.

Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him.

Jean de La Bruyère Les Caractères (1688)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Carroll (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.