He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
- Source
- Beyond Good and Evil, 146, trans. Helen Zimmern
- Written
- 1886
About this quotation
It is aphorism 146 in the section “Maxims and Interludes”. Helen Zimmern’s early English translation is the wording here; Nietzsche’s German says “Ungeheuer”, which can also be read as “monstrous thing”.