Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

1,220 Sourced Quotes

What do you plan to do in the land of the sleepers? You have been floating in a sea of solitude, and the sea has borne you up. At long last, are you ready for dry land? Are you ready to drag yourself ashore?

Friedrich Nietzsche
The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken.

Friedrich Nietzsche
In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one another than mothers and daughters.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

Friedrich Nietzsche
New Domestic Animals. I want to have my lion and my eagle about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them today, and be afraid of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me, and tremble?

Friedrich Nietzsche
Do I still have to add that in the entire New Testament there is only one solitary figure one is obliged to respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish affair seriously — he cannot persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less — what does it matter?... The noble scorn of a Roman before whom an impudent misuse of the word 'truth' was carried on has enriched the New Testament with the only expression which possesses value — which is its criticism, its annihilation even: 'What is truth?...

Friedrich Nietzsche
Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and most modern serpents.

Friedrich Nietzsche
All that exists that can be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: to believe in an existence that can in no way be denied and which is itself true and without falsehood.

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

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

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