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"Appearance" is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true that the essence of things "appears" in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world.

— Friedrich Nietzsche On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

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Philosophy

More quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous toy.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love.

Twilight of the Idols (1889)

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

They are not clean enough for me, either: they all disturb their waters so that they may seem deep.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

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