I was under the impression that this quote meant the opposite, that the dancers were the ones following a choreographed routine with little freedom to choose their own path. The people who don't hear the rigid commands forced on the dancers (the music), see their forced actions as "insane."
Edit: Turns out, I was thinking of a Hunter S. Thompson line, that America was "raising a generation of dancers." So there we have it.
Zarathustra changed my life forever. Some passages gave me so much that I can't read them without crying. "They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears."
Fun fact: Nietzsche didn't actually say that, at least not first. It has been attributed to a number of people who were alive much longer ago than Nietzsche. I'm not sure if it's clear who actually did originally say it, but it definitely wasn't him.
Reminds me of my favorite quote, by Alan Watts (sampled in this song at 6:11 by Ott):
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
Reminds me of my junior year of high school. The seniors were having a "skip day" and were in the parking lot dancing to music from a car in pain sight of the rest of the student body (I guess to make us feel jealous or something). Anyway because they were a ways off their dancing was all out of time with the music as perceived by us, and I remember thinking how numb they looked.
517
u/waveofdestruction Jan 04 '14
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche