Faith means the will to avoid knowing what is true.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

Preparatory human beings. - I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honour to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day - the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.

New ways I go, a new speech comes to me; weary I grow, like all creators, of the old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn soles.

Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.

Many other such substitutes for war will be discovered, but perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modern Europe not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible wars, consequently occasional relapses into barbarism, lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture and its very existence.

Prejudice of the learned. - The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they know what is good and evil, praise- and blameworthy. But it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better than any other age.