Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

1,220 Sourced Quotes

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
There was really only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

Friedrich Nietzsche
There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power—assuming that life itself is the will to power.

Friedrich Nietzsche
On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognizes the full import of this simile.

Friedrich Nietzsche
One must have a chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche
When a scholar of the old culture vows no longer to have anything to do with men who believe in progress, he is right. For the old culture has its greatness and goodness behind it, and an historical education forces one to admit that it can never again be fresh.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Many other such substitutes for war will be discovered, but perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modern Europe not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible wars, consequently occasional relapses into barbarism, lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture and its very existence.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

Friedrich Nietzsche
For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

Friedrich Nietzsche
There is something laughable about the sight of authors who enjoy the rustling folds of long and involved sentences: they are trying to cover up their feet.

Friedrich Nietzsche
These people who have fled inward for their freedom also have to live outwardly, become visible, let themselves be seen; they are united with mankind through countless ties of blood, residence, education, fatherland, chance, the importunity of others; they are likewise presupposed to harbour countless opinions simply because these are the ruling opinions of the time; every gesture which is not clearly a denial counts as agreement.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.

Friedrich Nietzsche
... to the priestly class — decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of "good" and "bad," "true" and "false" in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.

Friedrich Nietzsche
He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.

Friedrich Nietzsche
But the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and another yet is the image of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them.

Friedrich Nietzsche
What does your conscience say? — "You shall become the person you are."

Friedrich Nietzsche
Being silent is something one completely unlearns if, like him, one has been for so long a solitary mole - - -

Friedrich Nietzsche
The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption — in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Nobody thanks a witty man for politeness when he puts himself on a par with a society in which it would not be polite to show one's wit.

Friedrich Nietzsche
In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs

Friedrich Nietzsche
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

Friedrich Nietzsche
So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence.

Friedrich Nietzsche
You must climb above yourself-up and beyond, until you have even your stars under you.

Friedrich Nietzsche
A man unconsciously imagines that where he is strong, where he feels most thoroughly alive, the element of his freedom must lie.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Insects sting, not out of malice, but because they too want to live: likewise our critics; they want, not to hurt us, but to take our blood.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme, and do not merely rhyme...

Friedrich Nietzsche
A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

Friedrich Nietzsche
"Grant me, ye gods, but one certainty," runs Parmenides' prayer, "and if it be but a log's breadth on which to lie. on which to ride upon the sea of uncertainty. Take away everything that comes-to-be, everything lush, colorful, blossoming, illusory, everything that charms and is alive. Take all these for yourselves and grant me but the one and only, poor empty certainty.

Friedrich Nietzsche