Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Whatever harm the evil may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.

You never exist quite so much as when you are not thinking

A good seat on a horse steals away your opponent's courage and your onlooker's heart-what reason is there to attack? Sit like one who has conquered?

There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day to my birth; my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing.

Only ideas won by walking have any value.

Convictions are prisons.

Do I advise you to love the neighbor? I suggest rather to escape from the neighbor and to love those who are the farthest away from you. Higher than the love for the neighbor is the love for the man who is distant and has still to come.

In affability there is no hatred of men, but for that very reason there is all too much contempt for men.

If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.

If you buy the why, the how is infinitely bearable

The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

The enjoyment that all morality has given us to now and that it continues to give us--and so, what has kept it going up to now--lies in everyone's right, without lengthy investigation, to praise and blame. And who could endure life without praising and blaming!

The same relation exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they exercise the other.

The great wars of the present age are the effects of the study of history.

Heaping glowing coals on another person's head is usually misunderstood and comes to nothing because the other person knows just as well that he is in the right and has also given some thought on his own part to heaping coals.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

The Christian church is an encyclopedia of prehistoric cults.

The man who meets with a failure attributes this failure rather to the ill will of another than to fate.

Humility has the toughest hide.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.

There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

Those are my enemies: they want to overthrow and to construct nothing themselves. They say: "All that is worthless"--and want to create no value themselves.

A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god.

Reality is captured in the categorical nets of Language only at the expense of fatal distortion.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

[Heraclitus had] pride not in logical knowledge but rather in intuitive grasping of the truth.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The great man fights the elements in his time that hinder his own greatness, in other words his own freedom and sincerity.

...lust is only a sweet poison for the weakling, but for those who will with a lion's heart it is the reverently reserved wine of wines.

I have learned to walk: ever since, I let myself run. I have learned to fly: ever since, I do not want to be pushed before moving along.

Improvements are invented only by those who can feel that something is not good.

We must take precautions against being prematurely honed sharp--since at the same time we are being prematurely honed thin.

The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.

What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on its body?

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects . . .

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

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.

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

I am a prelude to better players, O my brothers! An example! Follow my example!

When art dresses itself in the most worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.

Faith is the path of least resistance.