Friedrich Nietzsche

Against that kind of “good will” (a will to deny life truly, actively) there is admittedly no better sedative or tranquilizer today than skepticism, the dear, gentle, lulling opium of skepticism…”Aren’t our ears filled with enough bad noises already?” asks the skeptic, as a friend of peace and almost as a kind of security police, “this subterranean ‘No’ is terrible! Would you please be quiet, you pessimistic moles?” The skeptic, you see, that delicate creature, is all too easily startled; his conscience has been trained to twitch and feel something like a pang at every “No” and even at a decisive, harsh “Yes.” Yes! And No!—that goes against his morality. Conversely, he loves to indulge his virtue with noble abstinence, as if to say with Montaigne, “What do I know?” Or with Socrates, “I know that I know nothing.” Or, “I wouldn’t venture in here, no door is open to me.” Or, “Even if the door were open, why should I go right in!” Or, “What use are premature hypothesis? It might be better taste to make no hypotheses at all.” …Even uncertainty has its charms…Our Europe of today…is thoroughly skeptical…and often sick unto death of its will! Paralysis of the will…