Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too.

We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"--and we give it.

Success has always been a great liar.

It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.---

There are instances when we are like horses, we psychologists, and grow restless: we see our own shadow wavering up and down before us. A psychologist must look away from himself in order to see anything at all.

In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.

It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character.

The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.

The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you - is to die soon.

In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.

The gilded sheath of pity sometimes covers the dagger of envy.

Phlegmatic natures can be inspired to enthusiasm only by being made into fanatics.

Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.

It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot.

Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth.

Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

The enormous expectation having to do with sexual love and the shame involved in this expectation degrades all a woman's perspectives from the start.

Antithesis is the narrow gateway through which error most prefers to worm its way towards truth.

One who dresses in rags that have been washed clean dresses cleanly to be sure, but raggedly nonetheless.

I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its concepts.

Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest

Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?

At heart I am a warrior.

I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom.

The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist.

All words are prejudices.

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman.

In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge, but egoism of a different quality.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

It is an end with priests and gods, if man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself - it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alones is mortality: Thou shalt not know.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

The sexes deceive themselves about one another: the reason being that at bottom they honor and love only themselves (or their ownideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wants woman to be peaceable--but woman is essentially, like the cat, not peaceable, however well she may have trained herself to assume the appearance of peace.

The English are a nation of consummate cant.

Light for some time to come will have to be called darkness.

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

Many find their heart when they have lost their head.

THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly.

Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.

Worldly Wisdom Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.

We should conserve evil just as we should conserve the forests. It is true that by thinning and clearing the forests the earth grew warmer.

God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.

Anecdote: Greatness Means Leading the Way. No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all intellectual greatness, It is only a question of someone indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluent; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally.