“However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots KNEW!”

German philosopher and writer

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and writer. He began as a classical philologist, then turned to philosophy early in his academic career, and is known for a body of work that drew wide scholarly attention and lasting popular interest. In 1869 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but he resigned in 1879 because of long-standing health problems. After that he lived as an independent writer, often in solitude and financial insecurity, moving between Switzerland, Italy, and southern France. He completed much of his main work in the following decade, before a neurological collapse in 1889 ended his working life.