[283] "-Pioneers-. I greet all the signs that a more manly, warlike age is coming, which will, above all, bring valour again into honour! For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age, and assemble the force which that age will one day have need of - that age which will carry heroism into knowledge and wage war for the sake of ideas and their consequences. To that end many brave pioneers are needed now, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing - and just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and the culture of great cities: men who know how to be silent, solitary, resolute,... who have an innate disposition to seek in all things that which must be overcome in them: men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity and contempt for the great vanities belong just as much as do generosity in victory and indulgence towards the little vanities of the defeated:... men with their own festivals, their own work-days, their own days of mourning, accustomed to and assured in command and equally ready to obey when necessary, equally proud in the one case as in the other, equally serving their own cause: men more imperiled, men more fruitful, happier men! For believe me! - the secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon pass when you can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests. Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to her - she means to rule and possess, and you with her!"
Book IV
From - The Gay Science
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The language of this aphorism may stand as an example of Nietzsche's 'embattled' style. Those few passages in which he employs the vocabulary of war have done more harm to his reputation and led to more misunderstanding than all his other writings put together. Quoted out of context they sound like - indeed, they often amount to - incitement to armed conflict: in context, they amount to little more than... 'Strife is the perpetual good of the soul'. . . The philosopher must add to ability to think the ability to act, he must endow his thought with passion - he must live his philosophy and not only think it, he must become a warrior, a robber, a ravager, of knowledge."
"The Wanderer"
From - Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy Pg. 144-145
- R.J. Hollingdale
Book IV
From - The Gay Science
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The language of this aphorism may stand as an example of Nietzsche's 'embattled' style. Those few passages in which he employs the vocabulary of war have done more harm to his reputation and led to more misunderstanding than all his other writings put together. Quoted out of context they sound like - indeed, they often amount to - incitement to armed conflict: in context, they amount to little more than... 'Strife is the perpetual good of the soul'. . . The philosopher must add to ability to think the ability to act, he must endow his thought with passion - he must live his philosophy and not only think it, he must become a warrior, a robber, a ravager, of knowledge."
"The Wanderer"
From - Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy Pg. 144-145
- R.J. Hollingdale
