Twilight of the Idols

Education and The Strength of Will

“To learn to see – to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it;  to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides –  this is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality.”

This is one of “the three objects for which we need educators…One must not respond immediately to a stimulus;  one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. To learn to see, as I understand this matter, amounts almost to that which in popular language is called ‘strength of will’: its essential feature is precisely…to be able to postpone one’s decision…All lack of intellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability to resist a stimulus.”

Friedrich NietzscheTwilight of the Idols

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