Friedrich Nietzsche

The will to power

Book two: Critique of highest Values

302 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
If only human values would be put back once and for all into the places in which alone they belong: as loafers’ values. Many species of animals have already vanished; if man too should vanish nothing would be lacking in the world. One must be sufficient of a philosopher to admire this nothing, too (-Nil admirari)*

303 (Spring 1888)
Man a little, eccentric species of animal, which-fortunately -has its day; all on earth a mere moment, an incident, an exception without consequences, something of no importance to the general character of the earth; the earth itself, like every star, a hiatus between two nothingnesses, an event without plan, reason, will, self-consciousness, the worst kind of necessity, stupid necessity- Something in us rebels against this view; the serpent vanity says to us: “all that must be false, for it arouses indignation could all that not be merely appearance? And man, in spite of all, as Kant says-“

*Admire nothing-usually quoted in the sense of “wonder at nothing (from Horace, Epistles, I.6.1.).