All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are fundamentally better than any other causes in the world, and they refuse to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all it requires precisely the same foul-smelling manure that is necessary to all other human undertakings.

History belongs above all to the man...who needs models, teachers, comforters and cannot find them among his contemporaries.

The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure. This function is performed by persons, relationships, professions, the fatherland, the world, or finally, for the really arrogant - I mean our modern pessimists - by the Good God himself.

That the world is a divine game and beyond good and evil:Min this the Vedanta philosophy and Heraclitus are my predecessors.

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

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.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.