The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As if her velvet helmet high Did turret rationality.... She fans her wing up to the winde As if her Pettycoate were lin'de With reasons fleece, and hoises saile And humming flies in thankfull gaileLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We, however, want to become those we are--human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create the...mselves. To that end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense--while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics or were constructed so as to contradict it. Therefore: long live physics! And even more so that which compels us to turn to physics--our honesty!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To "give style" to one's character--a rare and noble art! Those practice it who compass all that their natures present as strength...s and weaknesses and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one appears as art and reason and even weakness enchants the eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is s...till another world to be discovered--and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have given my pain a name and call it "dog"Mit is every bit as faithful, every bit as nosey and shameless, every bit as entertai...ning, every bit as clever as any other dog--and I can boss it around and vent my bad moods on it, just as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Amor fati: that shall henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war against the ugly. I do not want to accuse--I do not even wa...nt to accuse those who accuse. Let looking away be my only denial! And all in all and on the whole: I want someday to be purely and simply a Yes-sayer!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »