In this selection from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (1882), one of the best-known passages in his entire body of work, a “madman” pronounces the death of God and describes the anxiety and despair — and the opportunities — faced by people in a world without faith.

The Madman. Haven’t you heard of that madman, who on a bright morning day lit a lantern, ran into the marketplace, and screamed incessantly: “I am looking for God! I am looking for God!” Since there were a lot of people standing around who did not believe in God, he only aroused great laughter. Is he lost? asked one person. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he in hiding? Is he frightened of us? Has he gone on a journey? Or emigrated? And so they screamed and laughed. The madman leaped into the crowd and stared straight at them. “Where has God gone?” he cried. “I will tell you! We have killed him. You and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we do this? How did we manage to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it going now? Where are we going? Away from all the suns? Aren’t we ceaselessly falling? Backward, sideways, forward, in all directions? Is there an up or a down at all? Aren’t we just roaming through an infinite nothing? Don’t you feel the breath of this empty space? Hasn’t it gotten colder? Isn’t night and ever more night falling? Don’t we have to light our lanterns in the morning? Do we hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell anything yet of the rot of God’s decomposition? Gods decompose too! God is dead! God will stay dead! And we have killed him! How do we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? The holiest and mightiest the world has ever known has bled to death against our knives — who will wipe the blood off? Where is the water to cleanse ourselves? What sort of rituals of atonement, what sort of sacred games, will we have to come up with now? Isn’t the greatness of this deed too great for us? Don’t we have to become gods ourselves simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed, and whoever will be born after us will belong to a history greater than any history up to now!”

Source: Nietzsche and the Death of God: Selected Writings, trans. and ed. Peter Fritzsche (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007), pp. 71–72. Used by permission of Bedford/St. Martin’s.

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