Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Man would sooner have the Void for his purpose than be void of Purpose.

The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility.

To go on vegetating in cowardly dependence on physicians and machinations, after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, that ought to prompt a profound contempt in society.

Many things about man are not very godly: whenever a person excretes feces, how can he be a god then? But it is even worse regarding the other feces we call sin: man still surely wants to retain this, and not excrete it. Now however, I must believe it: a person can be God and still excrete feces. Thus I teach you, excrete your feces and become gods.

People who, out of an inborn moderation, leave every glass standing only half-emptied refuse to admit that everything in the world has its sediments and dregs.

The quality of a marriage is proven by its ability to tolerate an occasional "exception.

The grand style arises when beauty wins a victory over the monstrous.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

Some men have sighed over the abduction of their wives, but many more have sighed because no one wanted to abduct theirs.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.

The person lives most beautifully who does not reflect upon existence

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

The disgust with dirt can be so great that it keeps us from cleaning ourselves--from "justifying" ourselves.

He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers - and spirit itself will stink.

The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk.

Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.

Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints in the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil loose around them- but also the swine.

Not with wrath do we kill, but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

I welcome all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour!

Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.

Our body is simply a social structure made of many souls.

The empty, the one, the unmoved, the full, satiation, wanting nothing--that would be my evil: in short, dreamless sleep.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.

Without music, life would be a mistake... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.

A refined nature is vexed by knowing that some one owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to some one.

For such is man: a Theological Dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times - provided however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as true. Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will. Fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system.

Real dancers are the ones who can hear the music in their soul.

Error has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. Pure knowledge could not have been capable of it.

Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.

We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us.

The living is a species of the dead; and not a very attractive one.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

It takes just such painful and terrible things to occur for the great emancipation to take place.

The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.

It was the sick and decaying who despised the body and earth and invented the heavenly realm and the redemptive drops of blood: but they took even these sweet and gloomy poisons from body and earth. They wanted to escape their own misery, and the stars were too far for them.

He who knows himself to be profound endeavors to be clear; he who would like to appear profound to the crowd endeavors to be obscure.

The good four. Honest with ourselves and with whatever is friend to us; courageous toward the enemy; generous toward the vanquished; polite-always that is how the four cardinal virtues want us.

The spirit of the poet craves spectators... even if only buffaloes.

Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.

So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is Truth?

I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.