Quote Query: Nietzsche Or Kipling?

[Mighty_Emperor]

Nietzsche or Kipling?

I stumbled across this quote which is often assigned to Nietzsche or Kipling:

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

but I can't find the actual source. Anyone got any ideas? Of course it might be neither.

 

[Yithian]

I've got several of Nietzsche's writings here but i'm reluctant to spend ages sifting through as the quote will be tagged by 'tribe', a noun which could well differ from translation to translation. Will have a peek online, though I suspect you've done this already.

Edit: my first impression is that it isn't Nietzsche - doesn't quite sound right. And 'tribe' doesn't sound like Nietzsche.

 

[Anonymous]

I've noticed this one too-- about 60% of those quoting it have it Nietzsche, about 40% Kipling it seems-- and no one ever gives a citation for it. Makes me wonder if someone just made it up and everyone else picked it off his article/book/website or whatever. It certainly appears in a lot of circumstances which feel as though the person quoting has read the quotes but not the books...

I checked Bartlett's and several similar references and found it not. When I searched it online I got a lot of sites quoting Mein Kampf mixed in... and a lot of quotes-without-titles.

 

[Yithian]

Well, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has about 3 pages of Kipling and it doesn't feature there. I found a single reference to it being 'Attributed to him' online. I have a feeling that if it was Nietzsche it would be cited in full somewhere online as students would have quoted a gem like that quite often.

Also, further to my earlier hunch, Nietzsche almost invariably uses the term 'herd' to apply to the dis-individuated masses and it's rarely translated otherwise.

I think it's made up. Which makes somebody out there in cyberspace a proper nob!

Edit: Is this destined to become the misunderstood and mis-accredited quote thread?

 

[CuriousIdent]

Nietzsche or Kipling?

Kipling.

Nietzsche's cakes are shit.

 

[Anonymous]

Edit: Is this destined to become the misunderstood and mis-acredited quote thread?

Its a fine idea that there be one somewhere, but is it Fortean? I mean I know we're far from the maddening crowd and all , but do we want to draw a connection between literacy and strangeness?



Was I wearing a coat when I came in... ?

 

[ENTIANONMULTI]

Nietzsche or Kipling?

Kipling.

Nietzsche's cakes are shit.

but kipling can't be trusted for much else

 

[wembley8]

"If you can bear to hear the truths you've spoken
twitsed by knaves to make a trap for fools..."

I think Kipling knew a bit about being quoted.
And

"There are no facts, only opinions"
- which would kind of make the argument about fact rather tricky.

 

[MrRING]

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/5087.html

It's Nietzsche:

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/5087.html

It's Nietzsche:

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

LOL - no this is part of the point. If you Google for the quote you find hundreds of quotes sites with this quote attributing it largely to Nietzsche with a reasonable proportion assigning it to Kipling. However, none of the results are from Nietzsche sites which is telling as all his work is available in a variety of translations online.

It partly speaks about the parasitic nature of information online where people seem to be lifitng material from other sites without trying to verify it (have a search for vampire timeline for another explanation). It shows how important it is to actually track the source down and try and verify all information.

 

[MrRING]

Interestingly, I can't find it at Bartlet's Familiar Quotations Online:

http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/reference/bartlett/index.html

but if somebody has access to a paper copy, that would probably clear things up....

 

[Anonymous]

Interestingly, I can't find it at Bartlet's Familiar Quotations Online:

http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/reference/bartlett/index.html

but if somebody has access to a paper copy, that would probably clear things up....

As I believe I posted earlier, I have a paper copy of Bartlett's, and its not in it; nor in a couple of similar references I have.

To me it sounds more like Kipling, but not really very much like... I tried for Ayn Rand too...

 

[EnolaGaia]

A decade and a half later, I think I can put this one to bed once and for all ...

It's sounds like Nietszche, but it's actually Kipling.

It comes from an extended interview with Kipling by Arthur Gordon.

It appeared in Reader's Digest in 1935 (volume / issue / etc. unknown) under the title "Interview with an Immortal."

It was re-published under the same title (perhaps as an expanded edition of the earlier interview) in 1959:

Reader's Digest. Vol. 75. No. 447. July 1959, 38-42.

It was reprinted in The Kipling Journal - the journal of The Kipling Society - as:

"Six Hours With Rudyard Kipling" In: The Kipling Journal. Vol. XXXIV. No. 162. June 1967, 5-8.

A full text version of this issue is available at:

http://www.kiplingjournal.com/textfiles/KJ162.txt

The quote at issue here appears on page 7.