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Quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

Convictions are the more dangerous enemy of truth than lies.

He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

Whis is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Man is more ape than many of the apes.

Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine.

Woman was God's second mistake.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.

There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Only sick music makes money today.

One should never know too precisely whom one has married.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

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

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

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.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.

The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.

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

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

Life without music would be a mistake.

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

Man is the cruelest animal.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

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.

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

At the bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique human being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

Morality is the greatest of all tools for leading mankind by the nose.

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

Memory says, I did that. Pride replies, I could not have done that. Eventually memory yields.

The higher a man gets, the smaller he seems to those who cannot fly.

Disgust with dirt can be so great that it prevents us from cleaning ourselves - from "justifying" ourselves.

For a significant manwoman, the one thought he values greatly, to the laughter and scorn of insignificant men, is a key to hidden treasure chambers; for those others, it is nothing but a piece of old iron.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows us that faith proves nothing.

What we once did 'for the sake of God' we now do for the sake of money.

If the belief [in Christianity] did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little it must then be worth!

What a time experiences as evil, is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good--the atavism of a more ancient ideal.

It is time, it is high time... Yes, but to do what?

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

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

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Plato is boring.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

God is dead.

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.

We are always in our own company.

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?

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

I repeat that sin, man's self-violation par excellence, was invented purely inorder to make science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules by the invention of sin.

The "highest" states of mind held up before mankind by christianity as of supreme value, are actually forms of convulsive epilepsy.

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!

Some men are born posthumously.

Thinking evil is making evil.

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the best even of their blunders.

That everybody is allowed to learn to read spoileth in the long run not only writing but thinking.

That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Maturity consists in having rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.

Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.

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

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies.

People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.

This world is the will to power - and nothing besides!

I mistrust all systemizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

THE DISAPPOINTED MAN SPEAKS.--I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the APES of their ideal.

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

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

For others do I wait... for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul: laughing lions must come.

We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way - not at all or in an interesting manner.

Although the most acute judges of the witches, & even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was nonexistent. It is thus with all guilt.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

When virtue has slept, she will get up more refreshed.

He whom you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster!

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

The habit of intellectual principles without reasons is called faith.

Excessive productivity can bring the most gifted man almost to madness.

However far man may extend himself with his knowledge, however objective he may appear to himself- -ultimately he reaps nothing but his own biography.

Out of passions grow opinions, mental sloth lets these rigidify into convictions.

A profession is the backbone of life.

. . .the real world is much smaller than the imaginary.

He who has much to proclaim one day, stays silently much immersed within himself: he who has to kindle the lightning one day, must for a long time--be a cloud.

Not to see many things, not to hear them, not to let them approach one--first piece of ingenuity, first proof that one is no accident but a necessity.

Improvements are invented only by those who can feel that something is not good.

Everything that one thinks about a lot becomes problematic.

They punish you for all your virtues. They forgive you entirely--your mistakes.

He who makes no secret of himself, enrages.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

It is difficult to live with people because it is so difficult to be silent. And not against him who is repugnant to us are we most unfair, but against him who is no concern of ours.

What ever lives obeys . . . he who cannot obey himself is commanded.

All that is straight lies. All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.

Convictions are prisons.

The quest for philosophy's beginning is idle, for everywhere in all beginnings we find only the crude, the unformed, the empty, and the ugly. What matters in all things is the higher levels.

For verily, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach.

And he whom you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.

And we should consider everyday lost on which we have not danced at least once: And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!

One must need to be strong, else one will never become strong.

Whatever does not destroy me makes me stronger.

CP It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Christianity is called the religion of pity.

When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.

For men are not equal: thus speaks justice.

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

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

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.

CP At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

"Every man has his price." This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. To win over certain people to something, it is only necessary to give it a gloss of love of humanity, nobility, gentleness, self-sacrifice - and there is nothing you cannot get them to swallow. To their souls, these are the icing, the tidbit; other kinds of souls have others.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

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

He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser.

When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.