Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

1,220 Sourced Quotes

Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

Friedrich Nietzsche
As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Who is the most moral man? First, he who obeys the law most frequently, who … is continually inventive in creating opportunities for obeying the law. Then, he who obeys it even in the most difficult cases. The most moral man is he who sacrifices the most to custom. … Self-overcoming is demanded, not on account of any useful consequences it may have for the individual, but so that hegemony of custom and tradition shall be made evident.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Sharp and mild, dull and keen, well known and strange, dirty and clean, where both the fool and wise are seen: All this am I, have ever been, - in me dove, snake and swine convene!

Friedrich Nietzsche
Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without taste, at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost. Philosophical thinking, on the other hand, is ever on the scent of those things which are most worth knowing, the great and the important insights.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Where could we find an instance of cultural pathology which philosophy restored to health? If philosophy ever manifested itself as helpful, redeeming, or prophylactic, it was in a healthy culture. The sick, it made even sicker.

Friedrich Nietzsche
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

Friedrich Nietzsche
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter us and transform us.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche
What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him — even concerning his own body — in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Danger of our culture. We belong to a time in which culture is in danger of being destroyed by the means of culture.

Friedrich Nietzsche
He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche
It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.—

Friedrich Nietzsche
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

Friedrich Nietzsche
He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material.

Friedrich Nietzsche
It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?

Friedrich Nietzsche
I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.

Friedrich Nietzsche
That a person cannot and consequently will not defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes ; but we despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good will for revenge whether it be a man or a woman.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.

Friedrich Nietzsche
He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche