Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Another Christian concept, no less crazy, has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the 'equality of souls before God.' This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.

We would not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that.

The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills.

The inability to lie is far from the love of truth.

One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole - there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole...But nothing exists apart from the whole!

... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.

That which intoxicates, the sensually ecstatic, the sudden surprise, the urge to be profoundly stirred at any price -- dreadful tendencies!

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

In the true man there is a child concealed who wants to play.

Even the most honest writer lets slip a word too many when he wants to round off a period.

Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Time flies apace-we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it.

Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation - so teacheth you Zarathustra. No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me! And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving delight.

If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous when it awakes.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.

The danger in happiness - "Now everything is turning out right for me; from now on i'll love every turn of fate - Who wants to be my fate?

Not to be cowardly when it comes to our own actions! Not to leave them in the lurch!--The sting of conscience is indecent.

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.

The real world is much smaller than the imaginary

The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.

Science ... has no consideration for ultimate purposes, any more than Nature has, but just as the latter occasionally achieves things of the greatest suitableness without intending to do so, so also true science, as the imitator of nature in ideas, will occasionally and in many ways further the usefulness and welfare of man,-but also without intending to do so.

But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!

The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.

Once and for all, there are many things I choose not to know.--Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge.

Those that achieve anything that looks beyond the vision and thinking of their peers provoke jealousy and hatred disguised as the ordinary.

In the end we love our desire and not what it is that we desire.

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris.

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.

We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.

One is proud to worship when he cannot be an idol.

If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.

Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

Like tourists huffing and puffing to reach the peak we forget the view on the way up.

Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle.

History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.

There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation.

Everyone who enjoys supposes that the tree was concerned with the fruit, but it was really concerned with the seed. -In this lies the difference between all those who create and those who enjoy.

The drive toward knowledge has a moral origin.

Since men do not really respect anything unless it was established long ago and has developed slowly over time, those who want tokeep on living after their death must take worry not only about their future generations but even more about their past: that is why tyrants of all kinds (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that it will appear as a preparation and stepladder to themselves.

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness .

A real fox calls sour not only those grapes that he cannot reach but also those that he has reached and taken away from others.

One has to know the size of one's stomach.