“God is dead.”
-Nietzsche
“Nietzsche is dead.”
-God
Everyone knows this graffiti appeared somewhere. A wall at Harvard, a New York subway station, on a plaque with Nietzsche’s bust. You know, putting those “intellectuals” in their place. A fool hath said in his heart and all that.
Only did it appear? My google-fu didn’t help, but this sounds so apocryphal. Anyone got the, er, straight dope on this?
It has to have appeared somewhere. I don’t claim to have originated the snark, but I wrote it on a blackboard myself in the classroom where I was taking an intro to Existentialism course (c. 1978). The instructor left it there, but added: “Nietzsche is Pietzsche.”
It first seems to have been popularized around 1964 in the popular press. Whether it truly was first written on a bathroom wall, or someone wrote it in response to the popular press version, we’ll never know.
I saw it on a bathroom wall in college, but that was several years after the story had already gone around.
So, yes, it did appear somewhere at sometime. But whether or not it was the creation of a sanctimonious grad student or a professional comedy writer, I can’t help you there.
I remember this joke being used on the Dave Allen show, many years ago.
some guy writes “God is dead- Kilroy” on a wall
Kilroy gets struck by lightning.
The words “God” and “Kilroy” change places
Wasn’t this in the original ‘Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ as an utterance from the Guide? I don’t know whether it predated that.
Bob
It most certainly predated it. Norton Mockridge included the exchange in his book on graffiti, The Scrawl of the Wild in 1968. The book supposedly used actual graffiti, though I don’t think Mockridge ever documented where he saw what.
Though Mockridge himself was partial to the exchange:
“My mother made me a homosexual.”
“If I give her some wool, will she make me one, too?”
Tap! Tap! Tap! Is this thing ON?
It appears in 1964, both in books and the newspapers.
Whether it appears later is of little use.
Hijack: RealityChuck, I know I’ve seen your sig; where did you get it?
You’re probably thinking of the entry on the Babel Fish:
Animal Crackers (1930).
I’ve always seen this written as:
(implying that rather than smiting him outright, God just sat around nonchalantly waiting for old age to do its thing, getting his final laugh that way.)
I’ve read every book of the Hitchhikers Guide in the not too distant past and don’t recall it from there. Maybe in the odd radio shows and LP recordings, though… Never heard them.
Like the old Arab saying: “Sit at your doorstep and [eventually] you will see the burial of your enemy go by”. (Except if you die first, in which case you would not care.)
Whoever wrote “Nietzsche is dead” it was not God so Nietzsche still wins this match for now.
Btw, do most people realize that “God is dead” was a commentary on society’s view of him? Nietzche didn’t kill him and brag about it, he was reporting that society “killed” him by letting their morals get out of step with religion.
So the proper symmetry would have been: “Nietzsche is dead.” --society.
…but that doesn’t look as rhetorically pretty.
The difference, of course, is that I provided an actual cite.
If that’s indeed the case then the most appropriate form should be:
“God is dead” – society
or
“morality is dead” --society.
But i agree it wouldn’t sound as witty and funny 
:sigh:
24 Sept 1964 Syracuse(NY) Post-Standard 34/4
The entertainment column, Lyons Den, authored by Leonard Lyons, a contemporary of Walter Winchell, and in the same business.
Also, using Google Book Search–
The Impossible Theater by Herbert Blau, 1964. page 20
.
Now, did this San Francisco columnist actually read this in a toilet? Who knows, but it confirms that the joke was going the rounds in or about 1964.