Nietzsche Quotes That Prompt Understanding of Current Events

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Can we agree that we cannot understand completely? Each person arrives at conclusions based upon interpretation and interpretations are derived from the evidence used to process thoughts.

During the last year, as people have been confronted with information, we have argued the facts, debated the logic, and challenged the premises. I shake my head at ideas that seem impractical when aligned with my reality. I converse with friends and family who share opposing ideas with conviction. These respected, admired individuals challenge me to reflect but at the end of many conversations, I walk away shaking my head finding their train of thought derailed and impossible to follow.

This year has taught me to listen and then agree to disagree. It has shown me how one statement can have numerous meanings. The breath of deception has chilled my spine leaving me searching for truth while at the same time learning that every person’s truth is unique.

“Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those “truths” we once believed.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

The past year’s experiences have trained me to examine the evidence from numerous sources, primary sources, as they say, information that comes straight from the horse’s mouth. Though I find comfort consuming news from sources that espouse my point of view, I realize facts must be collaborated from multiple resources, and aligned with substantiated evidence.

Nietzsche’s words have enlightened me to two observations regarding society’s reasoning.

People don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. — Friedrich Nietzsche

From experience, I concede recognizing flaws in my beliefs is painful. However, the outcome of living in denial by ignoring facts in the present frightens me more than knowing history might haunt me with the truth in the future.

They muddy the water to make it seem deep. — Friedrich Nietzsche

My second observation develops from the above quote. As people are presented with the truth, it is often buried within exaggerations, ambiguous anecdotes, false information, misleading explanations, and lies. An engaged audience must work diligently to wade into the murky analysis and discover the pearls of truth. It seems the more a speaker says, the greater the amount of sludge there is to filter. When in fact, the truth is typically easy to identify and standing in plain sight.

There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If you want to know, if the desire is to understand when attempting to identify the accuracy of an interpretation, practice critical thinking.

The real question is: How much truth can I stand? — Friedrich Nietzsche

We are all afraid of the truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

First published Fri Mar 17, 2017. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher and cultural critic who published intensively in the 1870s and 1880s. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with modernity. Many of these criticisms rely on psychological diagnoses that expose false consciousness infecting people’s received ideas; for that reason, he is often associated with a group of late modern thinkers (including Marx and Freud) who advanced a “hermeneutics of suspicion” against traditional values (see Foucault [1964] 1990, Ricoeur [1965] 1970, Leiter 2004). Nietzsche also used his psychological analyses to support original theories about the nature of the self and provocative proposals suggesting new values that he thought would promote cultural renewal and improve social and psychological life by comparison to life under the traditional values he criticized.