Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

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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
What is wanted - whether this is admitted or not - is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.

Friedrich Nietzsche
I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely—that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Destination and paths. Many people are obstinate about the path once it is taken, few people about the destination.

Friedrich Nietzsche
One does not know—cannot know—the best that is in one.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Every one who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell....

Friedrich Nietzsche
All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries — a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Giving style to one's character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche
What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.

Friedrich Nietzsche
To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.

Friedrich Nietzsche
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation.

Friedrich Nietzsche
We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.

Friedrich Nietzsche
O, what nowadays does science not conceal! How much, at least, it is meant to conceal!

Friedrich Nietzsche
There is sense in hoping for recognition in a distant future only when we take it for granted that mankind will remain essentially unchanged, and that whatever is great is not for one age only but will be looked upon as great for all time.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.

Friedrich Nietzsche
There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask, go along it.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye must be proud of your foes.

Friedrich Nietzsche
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Mastery.- We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche
No one is such a liar as the indignant man.

Friedrich Nietzsche
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Friedrich Nietzsche