Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

You say, it's dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.

People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light.

Willing sets you free: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom--thus Zarathustra instructs you.

The good-they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end.

I and me are always too deeply in conversation.

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man.

The will to truth is merely the longing for a stable world.

One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153

Every man in creating the beautiful appearance of the dream worlds is a perfect artist.

A beautiful woman seductively dressed will never catch cold no matter how low-cut her gown.

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

At present I am light, now I fly, now I see myself below me, now a god dances through me.

I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! "Uniform" one calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide!

Astrology presupposes that the heavenly bodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny of mortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most nearly must also be the heart and soul of things.

That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.

A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.

The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author's book at all, but rather in the reader's head.

A thing can only live through a pious illusion.

Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected.

One must first be firmly set in oneself, one must stand securely on one's own two legs otherwise one cannot love at all.

Life without music is no life at all.

Women want to serve, and this is where their happiness lies: but the free spirit does not want to be served, and this is where hishappiness lies.

Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.

Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Who is better, they who promote truth over happiness, or happiness over truth?

It is certain that the Jew, if he desired-or if they were driven to it, as the antisemites seem to wish-could now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe; that they are not working or planning for that end is equally sure... The resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary.

One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

You shall become the person you are.

One should never know too precisely whom one has married

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.

Man is the only animal that must be encouraged to live.

Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it.

What, then is truth?... Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.

In his lonely solitude, the solitary man feeds upon himself; in the thronging multitude, the many feed upon him. Now choose.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.