Friedrich Nietzsche famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take hashish.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
-- 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 -
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
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.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
It is no doubt possible to fly--but first you must know how to dance like an angel.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
It is our taste that decides against Christianity now, no longer our reasons.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
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.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Everyone thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
There is one thing one has to have either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge....
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
You shall not steal! You shall not kill! Such words were once called holy; before them people bowrd their knees and heads, and removed their shoes. But I ask you: where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been? Is there not in all of life itself - robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy, was not truth itself thereby - killed?
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
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.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
They call you heartless; but you have a heart and I love you for being ashamed to show it.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
By losing your goal, You have lost your way.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Everything matters. Nothing's important.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Love is more afraid of change than destruction.
-- 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 -
Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair, but to him who doth not concern us at all.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
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.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
If one seeks relief from unbearable pressure, one is to eat hashish.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
This is the manner of noble souls: they do not want to have anything for nothing; least of all, life. Whoever is of the mob wants to live for nothing; we others, however, to whom life gave itself, we always think about what we might best give in return... One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The world was conquered through the understanding of dogs; the world exists through the understanding of dogs.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving, mercy?
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Sit as little as possible. Give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while moving about freely.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Improvements are invented only by those who can feel that something is not good.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Pitch-black winter nights live in my bones.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
All things that are truly great are at first thought impossible.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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