Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Biography

Type: German philosopher, Cultural critic, Poet

Born: 15 October 1844, Röcken (near Lützen

Died: 25 August 1900 (aged 55), Weimar, Saxony%2

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) is a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality.

Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!. Friedrich
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

There are no facts, only interpretations.. Friedrich Nietzsche
There are no facts, only interpretations.

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.. Friedrich Nietzsche
Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages..
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness..
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.. Friedrich Nietzsche
Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has
The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions-as attempts to find out something. Success
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions-as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments..
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I
All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends..
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book..
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.. Friedrich Nietzsche
The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely
one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long
Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.. Friedrich
It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.

Love brings the high and concealed characteristics of the lover into the light-what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it easily deceives regarding his normality.

Works, first and foremost! That is to say, doing, doing, doing! The 'faith' that goes with it will soon put in an appearance - you can be sure of that!

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.

Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.

Love brings to light a lover's noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.

Love, too, has to be learned.

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Art is the proper task of life.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.

In the end things must be as they are and have always been-the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.

There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.

Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.

Einer hat immer Unrecht: aber mit zweien beginnt die Wahrheit. Einer kann sich nicht beweisen: aber zweie kann man bereits nicht widerlegen.

...inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! ... He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage

I am one thing, my writings are another.

Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.

Plato was a bore.

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

You say, it's dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.

As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.

I have forgotten my umbrella.

One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.

Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this

To recognize untruth as a condition of life-that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.

love as a passion - it is our European specialty - must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.

Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.

One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of lif cannot be estimated.

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

The maturity of man - that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play

Business people - Your business - is your greatest prejudice: it ties you to your locality, to the company you keep, to the inclinations you feel. Diligent in business - but indolent in spirit, content with your inadequacy, and with the cloak of duty hung over this contentment: that is how you live, that is how you want your children to live!

Excess of strength alone is proof of strength

Your educators can only be your liberators.

All that exists is just and unjust and is equally justified in both respects.

Quiconque lutte contre des monstres devrait prendre garde, dans le combat, à ne pas devenir monstre lui-même. Et quant à celui qui scrute le fond de l'abysse, l'abysse le scrute à son tour.

Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.

Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!

Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the
spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

Plus d'un qui n'a pu liberer ses propres chaines a su pourtant en liberer son ami.

Dove la moralità è troppo forte l'intelletto perisce.

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?
Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.

Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.

Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital.

Around the hero, everything becomes a tragedy.
Around God, everything becomes what? a world?

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

They're so cold, these scholars!
May lightning strike their food
so that their mouths learn how
to eat fire!

For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?

In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature-: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.-

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!

I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps in them- and I hardly know anymore when I look at it how I could ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird.

Not how one soul comes close to another, but how it moves away, shows me their kinship and how much they belong together.

None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.

Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.

It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

philosophy is not suited for the masses, what they need is holiness.

Being sick is itself a kind of ressentiment. - Against this the invalid has only one great means of cure - I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without rebellion with which a Russian soldier for whom the campaign has become too much at last lies down in the snow.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard.

This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

A thinking man never be a party man.

We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

the voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls

As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealously ; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.

Beauty is for the artist something outside all orders of rank, because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power over opposites; moreover, without tension: – that violence is no longer needed: that everything follows, obeys, so easily and so pleasantly – that is what delights the artist’s WILL TO POWER.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier - their Christianity, for example.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away!

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.

That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art - panem et Circen.

Notre religion, notre morale, notre philosophie, en sont que des formes de decadence de l humanite, le contre mouvement: l art

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

Тяжело бремя жизни": не прикидывайтесь такими неженками! Все мы выносливы, как вьючьны%

Some men are born posthumously.

What a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past! To take everything objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love nothing, to understand everything- makes one gentle and pliable.

Every past is worth condemning.

...all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which has no history is definable.

The great wars of the present age are the effects of the study of history.

Pain is not seen as an objection to life: 'If you have no happiness left to give me, well then! you still have your pain...

Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking-humanity itself?

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

People have always wanted to 'improve' human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right -especially when one is right.

Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

There is no beast without cruelty

At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

Man is something that shall be overcome.... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.

When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

Here and there on earth there is probably a kind of continuation of love; in which this greedy desire of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and greed, a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them.
But who knows such love? who has experienced it?
Its true name is friendship

The Good Man
Better an enmity from one block
than friendship held together by glue.

One in three all friends are:
Brothers in distress,
equals facing rivals,
free men - facing death!

Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe.
It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.

And just look at these men: their eye saith it - they know nothing better on earth than to be with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! If their filth hath spirit in it!

The sum of the inner movements which a man finds easy and as a consequence performs gracefully and with pleasure, one calls his soul; if these inner movements are plainly difficult and an effort for him, he is considered soulless.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

We ought to face our destiny with courage.

- very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions - ? Rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions

He who is a firstling is ever sacrificed.

The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.

The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority- where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;- exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.

The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals.

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

To leave is to suffer,to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

Lucrurile supreme trebuie să aibă o altă origine, una proprie lor, - ele nu ar putea lua naştere din această lume efemeră, înşelătoare, iluzorie şi mizeră, din această harababură de amăgiri şi pofte!

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