6 passages
“Will to Truth” do ye call it, ye wisest ones, that which impelleth you and maketh you ardent? Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do _I_ call your will! All being would ye MAKE thinkable: for ye doubt with…
Zarathustra addresses the wisest ones and redefines their will to truth. He pictures their values as guests in a boat on the river of becoming, and names the unexhausted life-will as the real danger to their good and evil.
Read in the book →
But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living things. The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowest…
Zarathustra sets out his gospel of life in three things heard from living creatures: all obey, what cannot obey itself is commanded, and commanding is harder than obeying. He then says that even sacrifice, service and love-glances serve the will to be master, and that the greatest stakes life for power.
Read in the book →
“Behold,” said she, “I am that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF.
Life tells Zarathustra her secret. She is struggle, becoming and purpose, she turns against whatever she creates, and the knower is only a footstep of her will.
Read in the book →
Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but—so teach I thee—Will to Power!
Life rejects the formula 'will to existence', since what is cannot strive to be. Life values many things above itself, and in that valuing the will to power speaks.
Read in the book →
Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye valuing ones:…
Zarathustra applies the lesson of Life to morality. Valuing is a way of exercising power, and a stronger power grows from every set of values and breaks it, so the creator must be a destroyer.
Read in the book →
all suppressed truths become poisonous.
Zarathustra urges speaking even bad truths, because silence is worse, and bids everything break that can be broken by them.
Read in the book →
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that the formula for his destiny is found in Zarathustra's words that whoever would create in good and evil must first be a destroyer and break values, and that his Dionysian nature cannot separate the negative deed from saying Yea; as the first immoralist he is essentially the annihilator.