A note on sources.
Titles. Nietzsche’s books have been translated under different titles over the years. Some of these changes are minor, such as Thus Spake Zarathustra in old versions and Thus Spoke Zarathustra in modern translations. Zur Genealogie der Moral has been translated, with frustratingly minute differences, as The Genealogy of Morals, On the Genealogy of Morality, and On the Genealogy of Morals.
But some variations are more significant. One of Nietzsche’s aphoristic works is called Morgenröte and has been published in English as Dawn, as Daybreak, and as The Dawn of Day. Another book, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, is often translated as The Gay Science—in part due to Nietzsche’s subtitle “la gaya scienza”—but it is also translated as The Joyful Wisdom and The Joyous Science.
I have drawn from many different translations of Nietzsche’s works, but to keep things clear for readers, I will use only one title for each work in the main text: Daybreak, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Genealogy of Morals, and The Gay Science are the main beneficiaries of this policy. The notes will indicate which specific translation was used for each quotation, however.
Masculine language. Nietzsche’s language is often explicitly masculine. Altering it comprehensively would have meant reworking many passages and would probably distort the feeling—both good and ill—one gets from reading Nietzsche. I have elected to leave the language in place when it appears in quotes. In my own words, I have attempted to be gender neutral.
One: Burn the Boats
3 “Americans consumed information”: See the UCSD press release announcing details of the study athttps://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/general/12-09Information.asp.
7 “that famous hollow sound”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 31.
7 “If we possess our why of life”: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale trans.), 33.
9 As a 14-year-old: Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite: A Life of Nietzsche (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018), 27–29.
9 “At Pforta they were treating Nietzsche’s ghastly episodes”: Prideaux, I Am Dynamite, 36.
11 “If the enduring homeland of this good life”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 170.
12 “Small, soft, round, unending sand”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 106.
13 “If you experience suffering and displeasure as evil”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 270.
16 “The time has come for man to plant the seed”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 17.
17 Nietzsche thinks it equally likely: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Kaufmann trans.), 17.
17 “Nietzsche regards the failure to draw a distinction”: From Michael Tanner’s introduction to Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale trans.), 11.
17 “The earth has become small”: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Kaufmann trans.), 17–18.
18 “Give us this last man, O Zarathustra”: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Kaufmann trans.), 18.
19 “Information has become a form of garbage”: Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 69–70.
20 “The discovery of new worlds”: Ann Blair, Too Much to Know (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 11.
21 “Even if all knowledge could be found in books”: Quoted in Blair, Too Much to Know, 5.
21 “A diminution of that tension of feeling”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Helen Zimmern, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1909), 227.
22 “Ten years behind me”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 61.
22 Yet he cannot shake his “tormenting feelings”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 60.
23 “We need history, certainly”: Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (Hollingdale trans.), 59.
24 “Perhaps we philosophers, all of us”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1910), 350.
25 “put an end to all book-wormishness”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Anthony Ludovici (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 88.
25 “That nethermost self”: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Ludovici trans.), 88.
25 “I moved out of the house of the scholars”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 108.
28 “huge and mighty forms that do not live”: William Wordsworth, The Prelude: Or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 12.
29 “We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books”: Nietzsche, Gay Science (Kaufmann trans.), 322.
30 “Sit as little as possible”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 695–96.
31 “that restraining boundary”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 16.
31 “Not only is the bond between man and man”: Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (Whiteside trans.), 17.
31 “These poor creatures have no idea how blighted”: Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (Whiteside trans.), 17.
32 Socrates was a “typical decadent”: Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Kaufmann trans.), 727.
32 Nielsen data from 2019: Shown in the 2019 edition of Mary Meeker’s well-known “Internet Trends” report. Mary Meeker, Internet Trends 2019, https://www.bondcap.com/report/itr19/#view/38, slide 38.
33 “The ties we form through the Internet”: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 280.
35 “By an excess of effort”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Paul Cohn, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 34.
35 “the cultivation of a mental stance without objects”: Alan Jacobs, “Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,” New Atlantis 48 (Winter 2016): 23. Also available online (no page numbers) at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/attending-to-technology-theses-for-disputation.
36 “I knew noble people who lost their highest hope”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 31.
38 “The weak and ill-constituted shall perish”: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale trans.), 128.
38 “The sick man is a parasite of society”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 536.
39 “We can assent to no state of affairs”: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Ludovici trans.), 42.
39 “I have just had all anti-Semites shot!”: Quoted in R.J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 238.
41 “There is plenty in each of these books”: From Richard Schact’s introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), xxii.
41 “As always in reading Nietzsche”: From Michael Tanner’s introduction to Nietzsche, Daybreak (Hollingdale trans.), xiii.
41 “There are cranky reflections on diet and climate”: From Bernard Williams’s introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josephine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), xi–xii.
42 “bathos, sentences that invite quotation out of context”: Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche (Kaufmann trans.), 2.
42 “I mistrust all systematizers”: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale trans.), 35.
42 “We are faltering, but we must not let it make us afraid”: Human, All Too Human (Hollingdale trans.), 118.
43 “There is no work of Nietzsche’s”: Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Kaufmann trans.), xiv.
Two: The Secret of My Happiness
45 “Human nature has on the whole been changed”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1910), 35.
46 “We thirsted for lightning and action”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 127.
46 “In a journey, we commonly forget its goal”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Paul Cohn, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 297.
48 “For at the sight of work”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, trans. J.M. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 176–77.
48 “Leisure in the age of work”: Robert McGinn, “Nietzsche on Technology,” Journal of the History of Ideas 41, no. 4 (1980): 688.
49 “distracted from distraction by distraction”: T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1943), 17.
49 They were told to “entertain themselves with their thoughts”: Timothy D. Wilson, David A. Reinhard, Erin C. Westgate, et al., “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind,” Science 345, no. 6192 (2014): 76, https://wjh-www.harvard.edu/~dtg/WILSON%20ET%20AL%202014.pdf
50 “If the ‘why’ of one’s life is clear”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. R. Kevin Hill and Michael Scarpitti (London: Penguin Books, 2017), 444.
51 “At bottom, I find those moral codes distasteful”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 196.
51 “Ever since there have been human beings”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76.
52 Every creature, Nietzsche argues, “instinctively strives”: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 107.
52 “at the extension of power”: Joyful Wisdom (Common trans.), 289–90.
53 “Friedrich Nietzsche said that joy is the feeling”: Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 52.
54 technology is “a product of the highest intellectual energies”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 366–67.
54 Too many of the “energies” unleashed: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, vol. 2 (Cohn trans.), 210.
55 “the proliferation of intriguing technological innovations”: McGinn, “Nietzsche on Technology,” 689.
56 “The development and use of certain technologies”: McGinn, “Nietzsche on Technology,” 690.
57 “We all live, comparatively speaking, in far too great security”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 192.
58 “It is the misfortune of active men”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 170.
58 “For lack of rest, our civilization”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Helen Zimmern, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1909), 260.
59 “The man who has become free”: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale trans.), 104.
60 “Nietzsche did not intend to prescribe warfare”: Paul Zweig, The Adventurer: The Fate of Adventure in the Western World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 219.
60 “To modestly embrace a small happiness”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 135–36.
61 “And this secret life itself spoke to me”: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Del Caro trans.), 89–90.
62 “The strongest legacy of iGen’ers’ involvement”: Jean Twenge, iGen (New York: Atria Books, 2017), 177.
63 “Our networked life allows us to hide”: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 1, 157.
64 “For—believe me—the secret for harvesting”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josephine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 161.
64 “And if you must perish”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 316.
65 “Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999), 209.
65 “He who has always much indulged himself”: Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Common trans.), 104.
66 “Repeatedly [Nietzsche] insists that ‘knowledge’ ”: Zweig, The Adventurer, 205.
66 “In order to make this point”: Zweig, The Adventurer, 205–6.
68 “Their song of ‘equal rights’ ”: Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom (Common trans.), 343.
68 “may in a certain rough sense become good manners”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 193–94.
71 “The windmill gives you society”: Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1913), 119.
71 “Embedded in every tool”: Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 13.
71 “The press, the machine, the railway”: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Hollingdale trans.), 378.
73 “People don’t succumb to screens”: Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019), 9.
74 “The world might conceivably avoid destruction”: From Bernard Williams’s introduction to Nietzsche, Gay Science (Nauckhoff trans.), xiii–xiv.
75 Apollo is a god who “conceals nothing and says nothing”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 122.
76 “How can anyone become a thinker”: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Hollingdale trans.), 390.
76 “the most general defect in our methods of education”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 319.
77 “Behind your thoughts and feelings”: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Del Caro trans.), 23.
77 “I say, let us first and foremost have works!”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 29.
78 “Inspired by the Nietzschean ideal of human excellence”: McGinn, “Nietzsche on Technology,” 691.
Three: The Information Diet
79 Palladius says that his “gastric regions were deadened”: Quoted in J.N.D. Kelly, Golden Mouth (London: Duckworth, 1995), 31–33.
80 “The ascetic treats life as a wrong road”: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 117.
80 “I do not want to accuse”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1910), 213. Language modernized.
81 “And this is a universal law”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 63.
81 “All honor to the ascetic ideal”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale), 158.
82 “I tried reading books”: Andrew Sullivan, “I Used to Be a Human Being,” New York, September 19, 2016, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-my-distraction-sickness-and-yours.html
82 “a form of garbage”: Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 69–70.
83 “when it has no place to go”: Postman, Technopoly, 63.
83 “As autonomous individuals”: Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 6.
83 “To attend to anything in a sustained way”: Crawford, World Beyond Your Head, 15.
84 “Everything begins with attention”: Alan Jacobs, “Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,” New Atlantis 48 (Winter 2016).
85 As Postman notes: Postman, Technopoly, 75.
87 “I shall be asked why”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 36.
87 “I am much more interested in a question”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 693.
87 “During my Basel period”: Nietzsche, Basic Writings (Kaufmann trans.), 697.
88 “A strong and well-constituted man”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale), 129.
88 “I moved out of the house of the scholars”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 108.
88 Nietzsche was, from his earliest writings: Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (Hollingdale trans.), 59.
90 “A book like this, a problem like this”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 5.
90 “go aside, to take time, to become still”: Nietzsche, Daybreak (Hollingdale trans.), 5.
90 the opportunity to go slow in an “age of ‘work’ ”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, trans. J.M. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 8–9.
91 “Young people today process more words”: Mark Bauerlein, “Nietzsche on Slow Reading,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 2008, https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/nietzsche-on-slow-reading
92 “We are in great haste”: Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. II (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1906), 57–58.
93 “The art of not reading is a very important one”: Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1970), 210.
93 “What is it, fundamentally”: Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Kaufmann trans.), 680–81.
94 “In all that I say, conclude, or think”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Paul Cohn, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 178.
95 “One thing is necessary above all”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale), 23.
95 “I almost always seek refuge”: Nietzsche, Basic Writings (Kaufmann trans.), 699.
95 “I hate to read new books”: William Hazlitt, “On Reading Old Books,” Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), 60.
96 “Once and for all,” he writes: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 33.
96 “What am I really doing”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 197–98.
98 “Forgetting is essential to action”: Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (Hollingdale trans.), 62.
99 “With one quick look”: Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes, His Memory,” Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (London: Penguin, 1999), 135.
99 “to think is to ignore (or forget) differences”: Borges, “Funes, His Memory” (Hurley trans.), 137.
100 “Some memories are good”: “The Woman Who Can Remember Everything,” The Telegraph, May 9, 2008, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/1940420/The-woman-who-can-remember-everything.html. More context is provided in a 2019 Wired article: Gary Marcus, “Total Recall: The Woman Who Can’t Forget,” Wired, March 23, 2009, https://www.wired.com/2009/03/ff-perfectmemory/.
100 “Forgetfulness is . . . an active”: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 39.
101 the scientific worldview “hates forgetting”: Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (Hollingdale trans.), 120.
103 “It is always the same thing”: Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (Hollingdale trans.), 62.
104 “The event of the day sweeps you along”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 180.
104 “How can anyone become a thinker”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 390.
104 “At times when I am deeply sunk in work”: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Hollingdale trans.), 26.
105 “To set to early in the morning”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Anthony Ludovici (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 48.
105 “The scholar who, in truth, does little else”: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Ludovici trans.), 48.
105 “Smartphones are the primary enabler”: Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019), 115.
105 “Technology gives us more and more”: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 284–85.
106 “Noise murders thought”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 226.
106 “All of you for whom furious labor”: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Parkes trans.), 40.
107 “Why this solitude?”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 341–42.
107 “Contact with friends and books is good”: Robert Miner, “Nietzsche on Friendship,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 40 (2010): 47–69.
107 “Take healthy eating as an analogy”: Tony Fadell, “The iPhone Changed Our Lives. Now Apple Needs to Tackle Addiction,” Wired, April 14, 2018, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tony-fadell-apple-iphone-addiction-control-design
108 “rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering”: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Hollingdale trans.), 83.
Four: Wisdom Won by Walking
112 Socrates’s problem was that: Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 727.
112 “Socrates was a misunderstanding”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 478–79.
112 “We speak not strictly and philosophically”: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 415.
113 “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction”: Hume, A Treatise, 416.
113 “emotions occur in steps”: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 52–53.
113 “I have argued that the Humean model”: Haidt, Righteous Mind, 79.
114 “Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyous Science, trans. R. Kevin Hill (London: Penguin Books, 2018), 154.
114 “We think through the body”: Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 51.
115 “Sit as little as possible”: Nietzsche, Basic Writings (Kaufmann trans.), 695–96.
115 “Only ideas won by walking have any value”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 36.
115 “I think that I cannot preserve my health”: Quoted in Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019), 122.
116 “Technology proposes itself”: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 1.
117 “Every hour I spent online was not spent”: Andrew Sullivan, “I Used to Be a Human Being,” New York, September 19, 2016, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-my-distraction-sickness-and-yours.html
118 “What a ridiculous state of affairs this is”: Nathan Jurgenson, “The IRL Fetish,” New Inquiry, June 28, 2012, https://thenewinquiry.com/the-irl-fetish/
118 “The logic of social media follows us”: Jurgenson, “The IRL Fetish.”
119 “We have never appreciated a solitary stroll”: Jurgenson, “The IRL Fetish.”
121 “Computer interfaces, and the increasingly intelligent software”: Newport, Digital Minimalism, 181.
122 “the natural world begins to seem bland”: Crawford, World Beyond Your Head, 17.
123 “To invent fables about a world”: Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche (Kaufmann trans.), 484.
124 “Ten years have elapsed”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Anthony Ludovici (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 130.
124 “For my part, these things have never”: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Ludovici trans.), 130.
124 “It’s a gift to exist”: From Stephen Colbert, interview by Anderson Cooper, August 2019, https://twitter.com/AC360/status/1162183695270387712/video/1.
126 Many of our “chronic illnesses of the soul”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, trans. J.M. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 329.
127 “Habit seems to work from the outside in”: Crawford, World Beyond Your Head, 39.
129 “Everyone should sometimes write by hand”: These are three of the theses from Alan Jacobs, “Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,” New Atlantis 48 (Winter 2016).
137 “Oh, this moderation in ‘joy’ ”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1910), 255.
138 “Dionysus—under the name Zagreus”: “Dionysus,” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 26, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dionysus.
138 “the basic understanding of the unity of all things”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 52.
139 “This hope alone casts a ray of joy”: Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (Whiteside trans.), 52.
139 “Today I find it an impossible book”: Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (Whiteside trans.), 5.
140 “Today our whole attitude towards nature”: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 92.
140 “We are unknown to ourselves”: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 15.
Five: The Gay Science?
141 “What if one day or night a demon came”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyous Science, trans. R. Kevin Hill (London: Penguin Books, 2018), 220–21.
144 “Where are the new physicians of the soul”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 33.
145 “The worst disease of mankind”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, trans. J.M. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 56.
147 “as the screws of a machine”: Nietzsche, Dawn of Day (Kennedy trans.), 214–16.
148 “I know of no other way”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 37.
149 “only believe in a God”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999), 24.
149 “All good things laugh”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 257.
149 “Stendhal is one of the happiest accidents”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Anthony Ludovici (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 38–39.
150 He would eat nothing but “lightly brewed tea”: Sander Gilman, ed., Conversations with Nietzsche (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 111.
150 “we are always finally recompensed”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1910), 258–59.
151 “At an absurdly tender age”: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Ludovici trans.), 54.
151 “the hermit of Sils-Maria”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters, ed. Kurt Leidecker (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 121.
151 “Things are different with me”: Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters, 69.
151 “Even if I should, by chance”: Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters, 96.
152 “So then I really am going”: Gilman, Conversations with Nietzsche, 123.
152 Nietzsche replied with a note: Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters, 107.
152 The place “does not agree with me”: Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters, 113.
152 “Better to die than live here”: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 6.
153 “Who today still feels a serious obligation”: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Faber and Lehmann trans.), 29.
153 “Nietzsche hated the normal person”: Gilman, Conversations with Nietzsche, 145.
153 the friends he lacks: See Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Helen Zimmern, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1909), aphorism 2 in any translation.
153 “Technology is seductive”: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 1.
154 But “when people talk about the pleasures”: Turkle, Alone Together, 13.
154 “Distinguishing between genuine insights”: From Richard Schact’s introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), xvi.
155 “Followers I do not want”: Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters, 77.
156 “We are faltering”: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Hollingdale trans.), 118.
157 “does not stem from ill will toward technology”: Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 248.