Friedrich Nietzsche — Quote from Notebooks
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
Notebooks (1887)
Concepts: meaning, authenticity, absurd
Resonant Quotes
- “The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the ver...” — Erich Fromm, Man for Himself Nietzsche's perspectivism provides the epistemological foundation for Fromm's psychological insight—if there are only...
- “There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it can...” — Franz Kafka, The Zuerau Aphorisms Both expose the paradoxical nature of truth-seeking itself, where Nietzsche's interpretive skepticism meets Kafka's i...
- “Existence precedes essence. Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surg...” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism Nietzsche's interpretive perspectivism provides the epistemological foundation for Sartre's existential claim that hu...
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night These quotes form a powerful dialectic about the constructedness of identity—if reality is interpretative, then Vonne...
- “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Nietzsche's interpretive relativism provides the metaphysical groundwork for Dostoevsky's moral anxiety about the col...
- “O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Both champion radical questioning over received truths, with Fanon's embodied skepticism providing the lived, politic...
- “The human dilemma is that which arises out of a man's capacity to experience ...” — Rollo May, The Courage to Create May's subject-object dialectic provides the psychological foundation for Nietzsche's interpretive philosophy, explain...
- “Do it or do not do it — you will regret both.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Nietzsche's denial of objective facts perfectly complements Kierkegaard's paradox of choice, as the absence of predet...