Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

The man who does not wish to be one of the mass only needs to cease to be easy on himself.

To explore the whole sphere of the modern soul, to have sat in every nook- my ambition, my torture, and my happiness

Some mothers need happy children; others need unhappy ones-otherwise they cannot prove their maternal virtues.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.

One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses not to speak of the "wisdom of this world," which an impudent wind bag tries to dispose of "by the foolishness of preaching."

When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.

The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.

Once the decision has been made, close your ear even to the best counter argument: sign of a strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.

Poets and writers who are in love with the superlative all want to do more than they can.

I am not a man, I am dynamite!

At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service. What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart...that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience.

Different types of dangerous lives-You have no idea what you are living through; you rush through life as if you were drunk and now and then fall down some staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness you never break a limb; your muscles are too relaxed and your brain too benighted for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as we do.

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

Then is what you see through this window onto the world so lovely that you have no desire whatsoever to look out through any other window, and that you even make an attempt to prevent others from doing so?

I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands. Thus I now love only my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea; for this I bid my sails search and search.

I conjure you, my brethren, to remain faithful to earth, and do not believe those who speak unto you of super terrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are, whether they know it or not.

To become wise you have to want to experience certain experiences, and so to run into their open jaws. This is very dangerous, tobe sure; many a "wise man" has been eaten up in doing so.

We ought to learn from the kine one thing: ruminating.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.

Unconsciously we seek the principles and opinions which are suited to our temperament, so that at last it seems as if these principles and opinions had formed our character and given it support and stability.

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters, and coldly it tells lies, and this lie drones on from its mouth: 'I, the State, am the people'.

When a man has just been greatly honored and has eaten a little he is the most generous.

It is not things, but opinions about things that have absolutely no existence, which have so deranged mankind!

When you gaze long into the Abyss of Sustainability, the Abyss of Sustainability also gazes into you.

There are people who are so presumptuous that they know no other way to praise a greatness that they publicly admire than by representing it as a preliminary stage and bridge leading to themselves.

On all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity--I have letters to make even blindmen see.... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough--I call it mankind's single immortal blemish.... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose--following Christianity's first day!--Why not following its last day, instead?--Following today?--Transvaluation of all values!

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

The man loves danger and sport. That is why he loves woman, the most dangerous of all sports.

Every man has his price. This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. To win over certain people to something, it is only necessary to give it a gloss of love of humanity, nobility, gentleness, self-sacrifice - and there is nothing you cannot get them to swallow. To their souls, these are the icing, the tidbit; other kinds of souls have others.

What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate - and immediately forget we have done so.

I teach the No to all that makes weak--that exhausts. I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that pride.

Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today - burning us.

The surest sign of the estrangement of the opinions of two persons is when they both say something ironical to each other and neither of them feels the irony.

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

I am not bigoted enough for a system-and not even for my system.

The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'.

One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.