We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

One is punished best for one's virtues.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

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

Those who are failures from the start, downtrodden, crushed -- it is they, the weakest, who must undermine life among men, who call into question and poison most dangerously our trust in life, in man, and in ourselves.

Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.