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"Will people believe me? But I demand that people believe me: I have always thought only badly of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only when under compulsion, always without delight ‘for the subject,' ready to wander off from ‘myself,' always without faith in the conclusion, thanks to the uncontrollable mistrust of the possibility of self-knowledge which has taken me so far that I find even the idea of ‘immediate knowledge,' which the theoreticians allow themselves, a contradictio in adjecto [contradiction in terms]: this entire fact is almost the surest thing I know about myself. Within me there must be some kind of aversion to believing anything definite about myself. Is a riddle perhaps hidden in that? Probably, but fortunately nothing for my own teeth. Perhaps it reveals the species to which I belong? - But not to me: and that's enough to satisfy me."