Georg Brandes Quotes
February 4, 1842 – February 19, 1927
More Georg Brandes Quotes
He maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of artistic style running through every expression of a nation's life. On the other hand, the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is, as he points out, neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of culture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say, with want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles.
Georg Brandes— On Friedrich Nietzsche's views on culture, p. 6
Nietzsche asks how it has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that between the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in actually possessing the only true one and he finds the answer in the circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no former century has known, and to which (in 1873) he gave the name of “Culture-Philistines.”
Georg Brandes— p. 8 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
What is public opinion? It is private indolence.
Georg Brandes— p. 9 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way.
Georg Brandes— p. 10 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.
Georg Brandes— p. 10 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist.
Georg Brandes— p. 11 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
The great man is not the child of his age but its step-child.
Georg Brandes— [paraphrasing Nietzsche] p. 11
The educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age.
Georg Brandes— p. 11 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
It appears to [Nietzsche] that the modern age has produced for imitation three types of man … First, Rousseau’s man, the Titan who raises himself … and in his need calls upon holy nature. Then Goethe’s man … a spectator of the world … [Third] Schopenhauer’s man … voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth.
Georg Brandes— p. 11-12 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
History, in [Nietzsche’s] view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain chain of great men’s great moments, which runs through millennia, could not stand clearly and vividly before me.
Georg Brandes— p. 17 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.
Georg Brandes— pp. 18-19 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success.
Georg Brandes— p. 19 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Why you exist, says Nietzsche with Søren Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance; but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can.
Georg Brandes— p. 19 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools
Georg Brandes— p. 20 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
[Nietzsche inveighs] against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks.
Georg Brandes— p. 21 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. … We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values.
Georg Brandes— pp. 25-26 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person.
Georg Brandes— p. 26 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment: if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. Now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudo- science on a level with popular medicine, continually gained ground.
Georg Brandes— p. 26 (cf. Daybreak, § 11)
What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction.
Georg Brandes— An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889, pg. 31-32)
Those [Christians] had left to love on earth were then: brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called then: brothers and sisters in love.
Georg Brandes— p. 32 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism ... In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.”
Georg Brandes— pp. 38-39 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
What has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has turned inwards, has become self-torture, and all man’s animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards God. Every Nay man utters to his nature, to his real being, he flings out as a Yea, an affirmation of reality applied to God’s sanctity
Georg Brandes— p. 40 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.
Georg Brandes— p. 41 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
The loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed his subconsciousness. One only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares.
Georg Brandes— pp. 113 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
Punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.”
Georg Brandes— “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 38-39
