Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Modern marriage has lost its meaning--consequently it is being abolished.

We ought to face our destiny with courage.

I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!

No man ever wrote more eloquently and luminously [than Heraclitus].

Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia, - let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores!

One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should ou have your pride in the morning nad your resignation in the evening?

Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night.

The really historical performance would talk to ghosts.

If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take hashish.

No artist will tolerate the world for one second as it is.

Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands or falls with faith in God.

Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed.

The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent.

The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as soon as you ca not be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon past when you could be content to live concealed int he woods like timid deer!

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.

We only hear questions that we are able to answer.

In true love it is the soul that envelops the body.

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.

The parasites live where the great have little secret sores.

We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal.

The elimination of the will altogether and the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, is tantamount to the elimination of reason: intellectual castration.

Exhaustion is the shortest way to equality and fraternity.

A person unlearns arrogance when he knows he is always among worthy human beings; being alone fosters presumption. Young people are arrogant because they always associate with their own peers, those who are all really nothing but who would like to be very important.

We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.

Perhaps no one as yet has been truthful enough about what "truthfulness" is.

But eternal liveliness is what counts: what does "eternal life" matter, or life at all?

Faith means the will to avoid knowing what is true.

[Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.

How little is required for pleasure! The sound of a bagpipe - without music, life would be an error.

We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.

It is not in how one soul approaches another but in how it withdraws that I knowr its affinity and solidarity with the other.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

A change of values - that means, a change of the creators of values. He who has to be a creator always has to destroy.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.

Every true faith is infallible. It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search.

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.

A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power.

Is man God's biggest blunder, or is man's God?

Let old ones go. Dont be a memory-monger! Once you were young──now you are even younger.