Misattributed Nietzsche Quotes

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~ Rudyard Kipling

We ought to learn from the kine one thing: ruminating. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Every profound spirit needs a mask ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When self control is lacking in small things, the ability to apply it to matters of importance withers away. Every day in which one does not at least deny himself some trifle is badly spent and a threat to the day following. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth as Circe. - Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.- Every word is a prejudice. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

And this hypocrisy found I worst amongst them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We must repay goodness and wickedness: but why exactly to the person who has done us a good or a wicked turn? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You force all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

This is Europe's true predicament: together with the fear of man we have also lost the love of man, reverence for man, confidence in man, indeed the will to man. Now the sight of man makes us weary. What is nihilism today if not that? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Every philosophy which believes that the problem of existence is touched on, not to say solved, by a political event is a joke- and pseudo-philosophy. Many states have been founded since the world began; that is an old story. How should a political innovation suffice to turn men once and for all into contented inhabitants of the earth? [...]

Here, however, we are experiencing the consequences of the doctrine, lately preached from all the rooftops, that the state is the highest goal of mankind and that a man has no higher duty than to serve the state: in which doctrine I recognize a relapse not into paganism but into stupidity. It may be that a man who sees his highest duty in serving the state really knows no higher duties; but there are men and duties existing beyond this - and one of the duties that seems, at least to me, to be higher than serving the state demands that one destroy stupidity in every form, and therefore in this form too. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Like a deep well is the solitary. Easy it is to throw a stone in; but if it sink to the bottom, tell me, who will want to fetch it out again? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I am my own heir. ~ Lope De Vega

We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Had Nietzsche lived to be burned at the stake by outraged Mississippi Methodists, it would have been a glorious day for his doctrines. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Man, a hybrid of plant and ghost. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ~ Pierre Dos Utt

Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A well-constituted human being, a 'happy one', must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiological representative into his relations with other human beings and with things. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness…Everything good is instinct - and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The feeling of rank is one of the most basic human instincts. To gossip about someone is to elevate yourself above him or her. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's about Nietzsche's theory of universal debt. Your parents make it possible for you to believe a far better myth than Santa. They let you think that you, as a kid, don't owe the world a thing. The world can give you, even if just for a few minutes, utter joy without requiring anything from you. It's not about consumerism. As far as you know, no one buys you these presents. They come out of nothingness, with fantasies of elves attached. You aren't required to be grateful to your parents or anything like that. They can give to you and nothing is required in return. When you get old enough, when you have kids, you get to enact this myth for them. It has nothing to do with any fat man in a red suit, no matter what we tell ourselves. It's about owing nothing, and then realizing that you have to do this job of perpetuating this ... this fantasy world, whether you like it or not. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Jesus promised his disciples three things - that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble. ~ William Barclay

It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche