Angry Germans

Before law school I read a lot of books. The past three years have slowed me down, mostly because I get burnt out from reading boring stuff for school every day, and lose interest in other things.

When I was younger I read a ton of books on religious history and religious psychology. Some of these books are very profound, and I think everyone should read them. To name a few: Jung on Christianity, The Origin of Satan, The Gnostic Gospels, and Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism.

I think the main thing that ended my reading of religious and philosophy-themed books was that I made the mistake of thinking I could just pick up and read purely philosophical books. I quickly discovered most straight-up philosophy is so dull and boring, its almost impossible for a lay person like myself to actually put a dent in a 400 page book by someone like Bertrand Russell or Hume.

One philosopher who I did connect with, however, was Friedrich Nietzsche. He is different in that many of his books are written with an actual story and narrative, with characters and allegories, rather than just a dull textbook.

My favorite Nietzsche book is Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is the story of Zarathustra, sort of a parallel to the real life Zarathustra. In Nietzsche's book, Zarathustra descends from the mountains to preach a new morality and new ethics. Below are a few of my favorite lines from the book.

"Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters."

"All herdsman and one herd. Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same; whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse."

"The creator seeks companions, not corpses or herds or believers. The creator seeks fellow-creators, those who inscribe new values on new tables.... I will not be herdsman or gravedigger. I will not speak again to the people; I have spoken to a dead man for the last time."

"What the sense feels, what the spirit perceives, is never an end in itself. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they the end of all things; they are as vain as that. Sense and spirit are instruments and toys; behind them still lies the self. The self seeks with the eyes of the sense, it listens too with the ears of the spirit."