Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.

"Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those "truths" we once believed."

No more fiction, for now we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.

In our own presence, we all pretend to be simpler than we are: thus we take a break from our fellow human beings.

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion.

No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

To learn from our enemies is the best pathway to loving them: for it makes us grateful to them.

Discontent is the seed of ethics.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

All great men are play actors of their own ideal.

A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne.

I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.

Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

We are in the greatest danger of being run over when we have just gotten out of the way of a carriage.

What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.

When a man reaches his maturity in understanding and in years, the feeling comes over him that his father was wrong to beget him.

Without the errors involved in the assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has he taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your best wisdom. And who then knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom?

We have to learn how to come out of unclean situations cleaner than we were, and even how to wash ourselves with dirty water whenwe need to.

However un-Christian this may sound, I am not even predisposed against myself.

Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist.

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.

One is not converted to christianity; one must be morbid enough for it.

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care; the first instinct is to abolish these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. . . . The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The "why?" shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause -- a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving.

Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And don't forget about your legs either! Lift up your legs as well, you good dancers, and better yet--stand also on your heads!

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.

When there is a choice about it, a great sacrifice is preferable to a small sacrifice, because we compensate ourselves for a greatone with self-admiration, which is not possible with a small one.

Even in the lust of knowledge I feel only my will's delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because my procreative will is in it.

Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.

Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the notion that it is in their power to make a man happy.

Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached.

Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be.

In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms.

What convinces is not necessarily true-it is merely convincing: a note for asses.

An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

In the stream.- Mighty waters draw much stone and rubble along with them; mighty spirits many stupid and bewildered heads.

The followers of a great man often put their eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.

The truth is ugly: we have art so as not to perish from the truth.

Man must become better and more evil.

The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard.

Assuming that we have trained our imagination to denounce the past, we will not suffer much from unfulfilled wishes.