"But they are not making them as the abode of a rejoicing religion; they are making them as the citadels of anti-life preachers – citadels of cowards and escapists. They have organized religions just to preventso that religion disappears from the world, because religion can exist only in the individual, never in the collective.

"Do you have any organizations of love? – Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism? Love is simply individual; so is prayer, because prayer is nothing but the most purified form of love. Love is towards another individual; prayer is towards the whole existence.

"To destroy religion, the most clever and cunning way has been to organize it, to give religion a priesthood, to give religion a fixed holy scripture. Life never remains fixed, it goes on moving; and you go on carrying a dead scripture which has lost all relevance to reality. You go on listening to the priests – who do not speak out of their experience, who are simply parrots repeating what the tradition has given to them. Religion is always fresh and new. To make it old and ancient is to kill it. This has to be understood very clearly – only then Zarathustra may be able to reach to your heart.

Following his speech about the ultimate man, Zarathustra realizes that the people have misunderstood him

"One of my friends, an old man, but he loved me tremendously. There were only two men in India who were called Mahatmas, 'great souls' – one was Mahatma Gandhi and another was this old man, Mahatma Bhagwandin. He once said to me, 'If you are understood, know well, you must not be saying the truth. If you are misunderstood, there is a possibility that perhaps you have uttered the truth.' It is a strange fate that misunderstanding by the people should become the definition of truth. But he was right. People have been living in lies for centuries. So whenever somebody realizes the truth, it is bound to be misunderstood.

for they now cry out to him for the ultimate man.

"He was talking about the ultimate man to condemn humanity. It was a very philosophical way of saying to man, 'If you go on growing the way you are, you will become the ultimate man, and the ultimate man is the most contemptible thing possible."