The most unambiguous sign that a person holds men in low esteem is this, that he either acknowledges them merely as means to his ends or does not acknowledge them at all.

Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes--and calls it his pride.

There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.

Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

The belief in authority is the source of conscience; which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice of some men in man.

And he who must be a creator in good and evil: verily, he must be an annihilator first and demolish values.