Friedrich Nietzsche on Eugenics

“Pity on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection.”

“We belong to a time in which culture is in danger of being destroyed by the means of culture.”

“The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so.”

Original / Translation (German)

“Die dummen Moralisten haben immer die Veredelung angestrebt ohne zugleich die Basis zu wollen: die leibliche Veradlichung [...][,] sie haben an’s Individuum gedacht und nicht an die Fortdauer des Edlen durch Zeugung. Kurzsichtig!”

English: “Friedrich Nietzsche, eKGWB/NF-1884,26[281]”

“Die dummen Moralisten haben immer die Veredelung angestrebt ohne zugleich die Basis zu wollen: die leibliche Veradlichung [...][,] sie haben an’s Individuum gedacht und nicht an die Fortdauer des Edlen durch Zeugung. Kurzsichtig!
• Translation: Those stupid moralists have always strived for ennoblement without at the same time desiring its foundation: the embodied nobility [...][,] they thought of the individual and not of the perpetuation of this nobility through reproduction. Short-sighted!”

“One can justly be proud of an unbroken line of good ancestors, up to one's father-but not proud of the line, for everyone has that. The descent from good ancestors makes up true nobility of birth; one single interruption in that chain, one evil ancestor, and the nobility of birth is cancelled out. Everyone who speaks of his nobility should be asked whether he has no violent, greedy, dissolute, malicious, or cruel man among his ancestors. If he can thereupon answer "no" in good conscience, one should court his friendship.”

“If a man has no sons, he has no full right to speak about the needs of a single matter of state. He has to have risked with the others what is most precious to him; only then is he bound firmly to the state. One must consider the happiness of one's descendants, and so, above all, have descendants, in order to take a proper, natural part in all institutions and their transformation. The development of higher morality depends on a man's having sons: this makes him unselfish, or, more exactly, it expands his selfishness over time, and allows him seriously to pursue goals beyond his individual lifetime.”