Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

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Books for general reading always smell badly; the odor of common people hangs about them.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence — here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for "laws."

Friedrich Nietzsche
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?

Friedrich Nietzsche
We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions.

Friedrich Nietzsche
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.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us.

Friedrich Nietzsche
To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle which even the apes might subscribe; for it has been said that in devising bizarre cruelties they anticipate man and are, as it were his "prelude."

Friedrich Nietzsche
It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally — and verily, it should not be denied them. They are forces of the greatest importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness.

Friedrich Nietzsche
THE SUFFERING OF GENIUS AND ITS VALUE. The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. That gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic?

Friedrich Nietzsche
The 'kingdom of God' is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come 'in a thousand years' — it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere...

Friedrich Nietzsche
That every will must consider every other will its equal — would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The very reason [the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher, than our neighbor.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?

Friedrich Nietzsche
All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen.

Friedrich Nietzsche
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Friedrich Nietzsche
What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent : it is indecent to be a Christian today.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Alienated from the present. There are great advantages in for once removing ourselves distinctly from our time and letting ourselves be driven from its shore back into the ocean of former world views. Looking at the coast from that perspective, we survey for the first time its entire shape, and when we near it again, we have the advantage of understanding it better on the whole than do those who have never left it.

Friedrich Nietzsche
I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Is not life a hundred times too short for us — to bore ourselves?

Friedrich Nietzsche
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

Friedrich Nietzsche
Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

Friedrich Nietzsche
What I understand by 'philosopher': a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Amor fati: that is my innermost nature. And as regards my long sickness, do I not owe to it unutterably more than I owe to my health?

Friedrich Nietzsche
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Friedrich Nietzsche