“It is no small advantage to have a hundred swords of Damocles suspended over one: it is only thus that one learns to dance, it is only thus that one attains to any freedom in one’s movements.”
In this section of the “The Will to Power” Nietzsche lays out his theory of what constitute who holds sovereignty over himself. Real freedom comes not without the burden of falling into slavery, but rather as a result of carrying that burden and facing up to that potential every day. Some may be more familiar with this Nietzschean thesis in its appropriated paraphrasing by the Nietzschean protagonist of the movie Fight Club who suggests that the freedom to do anything is inextricably bound to the understanding that you can lose everything.
“I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?”
The centerpiece of Nietzschean philosophy is the evolution of man from primitive animalistic status to master/slave morality to the Overman, Ubermensch or Superman. The Superman here is an evolutionary leap a state that rejects the herd mentality of social values and morals and instead substitutes a personal code of authenticated by action rather than traditional reasoning.
"God is dead."
The most famous quote attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche is, paradoxically, one of the most misunderstood. The natural inclination by many has been to assume the worst of Nietzsche; that he was engaging in the ultimate sacrilegious hubris by proclaiming that God, literally, had been killed. The most common and universally accepted interpretation of this famous quote, however, is that Nietzsche was instead making a commentary upon the death of traditional religious belief and faith with the implication being that in the wake of the absence of a religious foundation for morality, how was society to respond to the disappearance of strongly circumscribed absolute values?
To “give style “to one’s character that is a grand and a rare art!
Nietzsche places great emphasis of the adoption of a sense of style. In the sense he is referring to, however, “style” is to be confused with fashion and certainly not to be confused with fads or any conventional conception. A person’s style must adhere perfectly to their individual personality so that it may serve the purpose of being the physical manifestation or presentation of all that lies beneath.
"That which does not kill me, makes me stronger."
or
"What does not destroy me, makes me stronger."
If you go searching for this famous quote and fail to find it in any specific translation of Nietzsche’s text, don’t be alarmed. This is not one of those occasions where a quote has been mistakenly attributed; the problem is one of translation. Some put it within the context of killing and others on a broader scale of destruction. Of course, you may also hear it in the form in which the pronoun has been switched: “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” Any way you put it, the meaning is pretty obvious.
