"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How will we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? The holiest and most powerful of everything the world has owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off of us? What water is there for us clean ourselves with? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games will we have to invent? Isn't the greatness of this deed too great for us? Don't we ourselves have to become gods just to seem worthy of it?"
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in shock. Finally, he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. "I've come too early," he said. "My time has not yet come. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering---it has not yet reached the ears of humanity. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from these people than the most distant stars---yet they have done it themselves."
It has been related further that on that day the madman entered different churches and sang his eternal deathsong of God. Led outside and called to account for his actions, he is said to have replied each time, "What are these churches now if they're not the tombs and graves of God?"
--Redacted from Nietzsche, "The Madman", probably sometime in 1881, in The Gay Science, Section 125, from Walter Kaufmann's The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking, 1954, pages 95-96.
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in shock. Finally, he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. "I've come too early," he said. "My time has not yet come. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering---it has not yet reached the ears of humanity. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from these people than the most distant stars---yet they have done it themselves."
It has been related further that on that day the madman entered different churches and sang his eternal deathsong of God. Led outside and called to account for his actions, he is said to have replied each time, "What are these churches now if they're not the tombs and graves of God?"
--Redacted from Nietzsche, "The Madman", probably sometime in 1881, in The Gay Science, Section 125, from Walter Kaufmann's The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking, 1954, pages 95-96.
