Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes (470 Quotes)

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

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.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

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

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

Oh, how much is today hidden by science Oh, how much it is expected to hide.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a 'new heaven' first found the power thereto in his own hell.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

Necessity is not an established fact, but rather an interpretation.

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.

Against boredom, even the gods struggle in vain.

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

Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.

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

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise so say the most ancient and most modern serpents.

It was modesty which in Greece invented the word philosopher and left the splendid arrogance of calling oneself wise to the actors of the spirit --the modesty of such monsters of pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras, as Plato.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue Where is the madness with which you should be cleansed Behold, I show you the Superman. He is this lightning, he is this madness.

Righteousness exalteth a nation.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

I teach you the superman. Man is something to be surpassed.

When we talk in company we lose our unique tone of voice, and this leads us to make statements which is no way correspond to our real thoughts.

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.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

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.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

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

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?

All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible it concentrates it increases the feeling of estrangement it strengthens the power of resistance.

Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself.

Success has always been a great liar.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

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

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. . .

We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.

The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.

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.

Woman was God's second mistake.

Physician, help yourself thus help your patient too. Let this be his best help that he may behold with his eyes the man who heals himself.