Alexander Nehamas

"All we are now concerned with is the search for “new and improved” version of whatever means are already available for attaining goals such means make possible. The value of the goals themselves is irrelevant … What counts is doing things better than before. Whether such things are worth doing in the first place is no longer a question."

"According to Heidegger, the blind desire for manipulation [of nature] came about because modernity turned reason—which was, for the ancients, and even for the medievals, a source of valuable goals—into a purely instrumental faculty."

"For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself."

"Irony, which in Socrates’ case consists of saying “too little,” functions for him just as hyperbole, which is saying “too much,” functions for Nietzsche."

"The one reaction Nietzsche cannot tolerate is indifference, and this is what his use of hyperbole is designed to eliminate."

"Both dogmatism and metaphysics … are attempts to project one’s own views on the world, and they are just as much attempts to hide precisely this projection from themselves as well as from their audience."

"To study the art of living is to engage in one of its forms."