Friedrich Nietzsche

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Where does one not find that bland degeneration which beer produces in the spirit!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason -- as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of eternity; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book -- what everyone else does not say in a book.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man -- the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom. -- A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences; what others say in a whole book.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

These people abstain, it is true: but the bitch Sensuality glares enviously out of all they do.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them -- I can write in letters which make even the blind see. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty -- I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity makes suffering contagious.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled -- because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the productive man a yet higher species.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his divine service.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. We drip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. For that very reason we ought to discipline ourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a little emotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard for us; and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thus present. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode of self-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in the preservation of the enemy's life.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A strong and secure man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds alike) just as he digests his meat, even when he has some bits to swallow.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no facts, only interpretations.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion, insofar as it sets that three-quarters free and communicates self-confidence and mutual cheerful agreeableness to those who know they are subject to its law.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Fear is the mother of morality.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Everything in woman hath a solution. It is called pregnancy.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders?

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are -- more humane.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In Heaven all the interesting people are missing.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart --not something that comes upon the earth or after death.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We operate with nothing but things which do not exist, with lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time, divisible space -- how should explanation even be possible when we first make everything into an image, into our own image!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

What is wanted -- whether this is admitted or not -- is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Insanity in individuals is something rare -- but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Instinct. When the house burns one forgets even lunch. Yes, but one eats it later in the ashes.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom --such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it --those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The word Christianity is already a misunderstanding -- in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms -- in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He who laughs best today, will also laugh last.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises. One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

— Friedrich Nietzsche