Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.

The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.

Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but rather spirits- of-wine: they can catch fire, and then they give off heat.

...If I continued to harbour any hope for music it lay in the expectation that a musician might come who was sufficiently bold, subtle, malicious, southerly, superhealthy to confront that music and in an immortal fashion take revenge on it.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way- not at all or in an interesting manner

Systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions.

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.

"Faith" as an imperative is a veto against science-in praxi, it means lies at any price.

O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!

What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger

One day soon you will meet a man, and he will rise like a phoenix from the ashes, and it is my greatest hope that he will not give you syphilis.

Yet where is your inner value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely; when you no longer have freedom over your own selves

The pure soul is a pure lie.

Nothing is more pathological in our pathological modernity than this disease of Christian pity.

The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self.

Smooth iceis paradisefor those who dance with expertise.

The weak and misbegotten shall perish: first principle of our brotherly love. And they shall be given every assistance.

One must never have spared oneself, one must have acquired hardness as a habit to be cheerful and in good spirits in the midst of nothing but hard truths.

Where does one not find that bland degeneration which beer produces in the spirit!

The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.

How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force!

In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies

I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful." But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of his heart and making it visible.— Altered opinions do not alter a man’s character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

Assuming that rapture is nature's play with man, the Dionysian artist's creative activity is the play with rapture.

The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.

The love of power is the demon of mankind.

The higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.

Pity is extolled as the virtue of prostitutes.

The text has disappeared under the interpretation.

One should only question gods where none but gods can reply.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

The most unambiguous sign that a person holds men in low esteem is this, that he either acknowledges them merely as means to his ends or does not acknowledge them at all.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.

That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober--this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.

Every man who has declared that some other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.

I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.

"Body am I, and soul" - so saith the child. And why should one not speak like children?

Ah, how little you know of human happiness - you comfortable and benevolent people! For happiness and unhappiness are brother and sister - or even twins who grow up together - or in your case - remain small together!

The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship.

And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.

Whenever the strength of a belief strongly steps into the foreground, we must infer a certain weakness of demonstrability and the improbability of that belief.

The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.