“Truth as Circe. - Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?”
“Man is the cruelest animal.”
“What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind?--They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.”
“Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'.”
“Man is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, of course, he is the most interesting.”
“There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.”
“Creo que los animales ven en el hombre un ser igual a ellos que ha perdido de forma extraordinariamente peligrosa el sano intelecto animal, es decir, que ven en él al animal irracional, al animal que ríe, al animal que llora, al animal infeliz.”