“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”

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.