Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the more secret affairs of their friends.

You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.

But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?

Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:--and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on--so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence.

This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

If one uses one's intellect to become master over the unlimited emotions, it may produce a sorry and diversionary effect upon the intellect.

Our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us.

The best belongs to me and mine; and if we are not given it, we take it: the best food, the purest sky, the most robust thoughts, the fairest women!

We have to be careful that in throwing out the devil, we don't throw out the best part of ourselves.

You cannot learn to fly by flying. First you must learn to walk, to run, to climb, to dance.

A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.

In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.

It is no doubt possible to fly--but first you must know how to dance like an angel.

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

This verse gets me through each day, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger! I am not afraid of anything because the lord is my shepherd!

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

I know my fate. One day my name will be tied to the memory of something monstrous - a crisis without equal on earth.... I am no man, I am dynamite!

Too long, the earth has been a madhouse!

Learn to see - accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting-things-come-to-it; learning to defer judgment, to encircle and encompass the question on all sides.

Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death.

The ordinary man is as courageous and invulnerable as a hero when he does not recognize any danger, when he has no eyes to see it.Conversely, the hero's only vulnerable spot is on his back, and so exactly where he has no eyes.

Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.

When we think of all the things we want to do with our other half the answer should be simple; we should want to do absolutely everything with them. We should want to experience everything, feel everything, see everything with no one but them by our sides. When we look back on our lives it's not the things we did do with them that we'll regret, it's the things we didn't do.

Here we also see: what this divinity lacks is not only a sense of shame-and there are also other reasons for conjecturing that in several respects all of the gods could learn from us humans. We humans are-more humane.

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.

Almost two thousand years, and no new god!

With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.

Every god-man created his own god: and there is no worse enmity on earth than that between gods.

Necessity is not a fact; it's an interpretation.

When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.

He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.

Who has not for the sake of his reputation sacrificed himself?

Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride and have no prospect of great conquests; for them the easy prey - and that is what all who suffer are - is enchanting.

This world is the will to power and nothing besides!

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.

Every word has its fragrance: there is a harmony and a disharmony of fragrances, and hence of words.

How much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.