Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unexplored seas!
Friedrich Nietzsche The Joyful Wisdom, Book IV, 283 (1882) Translated by Thomas Common
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When and why it was written
- When
- From The Joyful Wisdom, published in 1882.
- Why
- Nietzsche is calling for bolder, more adventurous lives than comfort allows.
What it means
Nietzsche's image is deliberately extreme: live where the risk is. He thought a safe life was a smaller one.
Not everyone needs a volcano. Most of us need a little more courage than yesterday.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
Read the source
The Joyful Wisdom, 1882
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