Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting

The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing.

Every past is worth condemning.

Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder, the coldness increases, responsibility increases.

Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!

'He who seeks may easily get lost himself. It is a crime to go apart and be alone.' Thus speaks the herd.

Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.

You say a good cause justifies any war; but I say a good war justifies any cause.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

What is life? A continuous praise and blame.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.--What was that god thinking who counseled, "Know thyself!" Did he perhaps mean,"Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!"--And Socrates?--And "scientific men"?

The love of indulgence is rooted in the depths of a man's heart. His soul would prefer to share the excessive and unrestrained; but his soul cannot love.

Every word is a prejudice.

Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

Our drives are reducible to the will to power. The will to power is the ultimate fact at which we arrive.

And nobody lies as much as the indignant do.

Talking much about oneself may be a way of hiding oneself.

The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed

The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strangers soundeth the precept: "Die at the right time!"

Truths are illlusions which we have forgotten are illusions.

He who strays from the customary becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who keeps to the customary becomes its slave. He iscondemned to perish in either case.

When I contemplated purpose I also contemplated chance and foolishness.

Life is fountain of joy; but where the rabble also gather to drink, all wells are poisoned.

When asses are needed.- You will never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until you ride into town on an ass.

The object of convalescence ought to be to turn our attention to life: at other times, simply to our tasks!

Buddha says: "Do not flatter your benefactor!". Let one repeat this saying in a Christian church : it immediately purifies the air of everything Christian.

We are all afraid of the truth.

Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman.

In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without "taste," at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost.

This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.

Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

What is wanted - whether this is admitted or not - is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.

That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe-the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? — The feeling that power is increasing — that resistance has been overcome.

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.

Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what there is to love in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.

The greatest progress that the human race has made lies in learning how to make correct inferences.

Women and egoistic artists entertain a feeling towards science that is something composed of envy and sentimentality.

Not infrequently, we encounter copies of important human beings; and here, too, as in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.