Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them, is not something dreadful also.

The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'

God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!

Creating-that is the great salvation from suffering.

Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?

The beast in us must be[78] wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces.

All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?

I am alone again and I want to be so; alone with the pure sky and open sea.

What do you plan to do in the land of the sleepers? You have been floating in a sea of solitude, and the sea has borne you up. At long last, are you ready for dry land? Are you ready to drag yourself ashore?

I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.

The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick.

Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.

Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

That God became man indicates only this: that man should not seek his salvation in eternity, but rather establish his heaven on earth.

The Gay Science, section 108

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought Teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep Without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-Thus spoke Zarathustra.

He has drawn back, only in order to have enough room for his leap

Truth is only an illusion we have forgotten is an illusion.

People who feel insecure in social situations never miss a chance to exhibit their dominance over close, submissive friends, whomthey put down publicly, in front of everyone--by teasing, for example.

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness.

I devote myself to what I love the most, and for this very reason I hesitate to designate it with lofty words: I do not want to risk believing that it is a sublime compulsion, a law, which I obey: I love what I love the most too much to wish to appear to it as one compelled.

And if a man goes through fire for his doctrine - what does that prove? Verily, it is more if your own doctrine comes out of your own fire.

The melancholia of everything completed!

What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do.

A heart full of courage and cheerfulness needs a little danger from time to time, or the world gets unbearable.

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written.

Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's emancipator.

If we have injured someone, giving him the opportunity to make a joke about us is often enough to provide him personal satisfaction, or even to win his good will.

I hate who steals my solitude, without really offer me in exchange company.

A man who is very busy seldom changes his opinions.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Men after death ... are understood worse than men of the moment, but heard better.

The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

Respectability offends my taste.

If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.

Human, all too human.

I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.

Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power.

The more a person indulges himself the less others are willing to indulge him.

Man is at his furthest remove from the animal as a child, his intellect most human. With his fifteenth year and puberty he comes astep closer to the animal; with the sense of possessions of his thirties (the median line between laziness and greediness), still another step. In his sixtieth year of life he frequently loses his modesty as well, then the septuagenarian steps up to us as a completely unmasked beast: one need only look at the eyes and the teeth.

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity,' be.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Only as an aesthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity.

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.