Nietzsche Quotes

Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There are many more languages than one imagines. And man reveals himself much more often than he wishes. So many things that speak! But there are always so few listeners, so that man, so to speak, only chatters in a void when he engages in confessions. He wastes his truths just as the sun wastes its light. Isn't it too bad that the void has no ears? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

No one tells me anything new, so I tell myself my own story. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. [ ... ] A human being may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like to answer, and say, 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to say' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One never perishes through anybody but oneself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

From the Sun I learned this: when he goes down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars. For this I once saw and I did not tire of my tears as I watched it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier
their Christianity, for example. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The truthful man ends up realizing that he always lies. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it. ~ Irving Kristol

Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's emancipator. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One person is always too many around me. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Principle of "Christian love": it insists upon being well paid in the end. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values - they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The root of all evil: that the slavish morality of meekness, chastity, selflessness, absolute obedience, has triumphed - ruling natures were thus condemned (1) to hypocrisy, (2) to torments of conscience - creative natures felt like rebels against God, uncertain and inhibited by eternal values.

In summa: the best things have been slandered because the weak or the immoderate swine have cast a bad light on them - and the best men have remained hidden - and have often misunderstood themselves. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

This modernity makes us ill: whinging peace and cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous filth of the modern mentality. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that "forgives" everything because it "understands" everything is a desert wind for us. Better to live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such southern winds! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Not through enmity does enmity come to an end; enmity comes to an end through friendship. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is a dark chain of events. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

He who does not lie does not know what truth is. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have passed it on. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In order that the concept of substance could originate
which is indispensable for logic although in the strictest sense nothing real corresponds to it
it was likewise necessary that for a long time one did not see or perceive the changes in things. The beings that did not see so precisely had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." At bottom, every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings would have survived if the opposite tendency
to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgment rather than be just
had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

But the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity - he saw them all as allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, of the botched against the fit. ~ H.L. Mencken

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You shall love beyond yourselves some day! So first, learn to love. And for that you have to drink the bitter cup of your love. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The "I" is a grammatical fiction (Nietzsche). There are bundles of impressions but no underlying self (Hume). There is no survival because there is no person (Buddha, Parfit). ~ Max More

As much as possible, and this as quickly as possible: that is what the great mental and emotional illness craves that is variously called "present" or "culture," but that is actually a symptom of consumption. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What is this man ? A ball of wild snakes which seldom have peace together - so they go forth alone and seek prey in the world. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We should conserve evil just as we should conserve the forests. It is true that by thinning and clearing the forests the earth grew warmer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, you love, shall it itself become! and verily, for your bliss ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A man who possesses genius is insufferable unless he also possesses at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness. ~ 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

I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Frederick Nietzsche was important to me, in teaching that it's okay to strive to improve the human being. ~ Zoltan Istvan

The parasites live where the great have little secret sores. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Whoever does not believe himself always lies. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober
this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Whoever no longer finds greatness in God no longer finds it anywhere
he must either deny it or create it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The dyed-in-the-wool teacher takes everything seriously only with respect to his students
himself included. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We are noble, good, beautiful, and happy! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That old queer Nietzsche had it right: Christianity was, at the end of the day, a feminine religion. ~ Michel Houellebecq

It takes chaos to give birth to a dancing star ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I conjure you, my brethren, to remain faithful to earth, and do not believe those who speak unto you of super terrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are, whether they know it or not. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is discovered an extraordinary similarity between Nietzsche and the Hindu-Aryan Rishi, visionary poets of the Vedas.

They also thought the ideas from outside to inside: they 'appeared' to them. Rishi means 'he who sees'. See an Idea, express it, or try to express it. The job of the Rishis has been fulfilled for millennia and the vision of the Vedas was revised, elaborated, in subsequent visions, in scholastics, in doctrinal buildings and sophisticated verifications, through centuries.

In any case, he, who preached not to subtract anything that life offers as Will of Power, as possession, increasing its power, lived chaste, like a yoga, always looking for the highest tensions of the soul, climbing always, more and more lonely, to be able to open up to that style of thinking, where the Ideas could possess him as the most authentic expression of life, as his 'pulse', hitting him in the center of the personal being, or of the existence there accumulated, and that he called, long before Jung and any other psychologist, the Self, to differentiate it from the conscious and limited self, from the rational self.

Let's clarify, then. What Nietzsche called thinking is something else, Nietzsche did not think with his head (because 'synchronistically' hurt) but with the Self, with all of life and, especially, 'with the feet'. 'I think with my feet,' he said, 'because I think walking, climbing. ~ Miguel Serrano

All prejudices may be traced back to the intestines. A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Ghost. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Even if you're not as illiberal as Nietzsche, you might be worried if Nietzsche's right that certain kinds of traditional moral values are incompatible with the existence of people like Beethoven. That's the strong psychological [psycho-physiological] claim he makes – that you can't really be a creative genius like Beethoven and take morality seriously. I think even good old democratic egalitarian liberals could worry a bit about that, if it were true. It's a very striking and pessimistic challenge, because the liberal post-Enlightenment vision is that we can have our liberal democratic egalitarian ethos and everyone will be able to flourish. Nietzsche thinks there's a profound tension between the values that traditional morality holds up and the conditions necessary for creative genius.
[...]
The illiberal attitudes and the elitism was really central to the way he looked at things. The suffering of mankind at large was not a significant ethical concern in his view, it was largely a matter of indifference – in fact it was to be welcomed because there's nothing better than a good dose of suffering to get the creative juices flowing. ~ Brian Leiter

Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith. ~ Norman Davies

Whoever approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart, searching among them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate spirituality, for charity and benevolence, will soon be forced to turn his back on them, discouraged and disappointed. For there is nothing here that suggests asceticism, spirituality, or duty. We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified. ~ 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

Some mothers need happy children; others need unhappy ones-otherwise they cannot prove their maternal virtues. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing ... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no facts, only interpretations. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Thinking leads inexorably to the abyss. It did not work for Tolstoy. It might not even have worked for Nietzsche, who arguably thought more clearly about such things than anyone in history. But if it is not thinking that can be relied upon in the direst of situations, what is left? Thought, after all, is the highest of human achievements, is it not?
Perhaps not.
Something supersedes thinking, despite its truly awesome power. When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations - in the depths - it's noticing, not thinking, that does the trick. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

When women hate. When feeling hatred, women are more dangerous than men. First and foremost because once their hostile feeling has been aroused, they are inhibited by no considerations of fairness but let their hatred swell undisturbed to the final consequences; and second, because they are practiced in finding sore spots (which every man, every party has) and stabbing there: then their rapier-sharp mind performs splendid services for them (while men, when they see wounds, become restrained, often generous and conciliatory). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Maybe I'm inclined to what Nietzsche called "impure thought," that is to say, a kind of thought where abstractions are so mixed with the facts of life that you can't disentangle them. I feel thought in general, and in particular what is unfortunately called "philosophy," should lead a sort of clandestine life for a while, just to renew itself. By clandestine I mean concealed in stories, in anecdotes, in numerous forms that are not the form of the treatise. Then thought can biologically renew itself, as it were. ~ Roberto Calasso

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Around the hero, everything becomes a tragedy.
Around God, everything becomes what? a world? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

in truth man is polluted river. one must be a sea to receive a polluted river without becoming defiled. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In what does the objective measure of value lie? In the quantum of enhanced and organized power alone, in accordance with what occurs in all occurrence, a will to increase. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' about those? Try taking away the phantasm and the entire human
contribution, you sober realists! Yes, if only you could do that! If you could forget your heritage, your past, your training – your entire humanity and animality! For us there is no 'reality' – nor for you either, you sober ones. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

He tolerates no other enemy than one in whom nothing is to be despised and a great deal is worthy of respect! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth is only an illusion we have forgotten is an illusion. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

About sacrifice and the offering of sacrifices, sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on: but they have never been allowed to have their say. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became "geniuses" (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole. - FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE ~ Robert Greene

We must take precautions against being prematurely honed sharp
since at the same time we are being prematurely honed thin. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There are feelings which want to kill the lonely; and if they do not succeed, well, then they themselves must die. But are you capable of this - to be a murderer? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Why?" said Zarathustra. "Thou askest why? I do not belong to those who may be asked after their Why. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the declining levels of society, insists on 'right,' 'justice,' 'equal rights' with such beautiful indignation, he is just acting under the pressure of his lack of culture, which cannot grasp why he really suffers, what he is poor in– in life.

A drive to find causes is powerful in him: it must be somebody's fault that he's feeling bad . . . Even his 'beautiful indignation' does him good; all poor devils like to whine--it gives them a little thrill of power. Even complaints, the act of complaining, can give life the charm on account of which one can stand to live it: there is a subtle dose of revenge in every complaint; one blames those who are different for one's own feeling bad, and in certain circumstances even being bad, as if they were guilty of an injustice, a prohibited privilege. 'If I'm a lowlife, you should be one too': on this logic, revolutions are built.–

Complaining is never good for anything; it comes from weakness. Whether one ascribes one's feeling bad to others or to oneself–the socialist does the former, the Christian, for example, the latter–makes no real difference. What is common to both and, let us add, what is unworthy, is that it should be someone's fault that one is suffering–in short, that the sufferer prescribes the honey of revenge as a cure for his own suffering. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Courage is the best slayer - courage which attacketh, for in every attack there is the sound of triumph. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The noble soul reveres itself ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To be sure, it takes a stronger gaze and a better will to further that which is evolving and imperfect, rather than to penetrate its imperfection and reject it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I myself, to be sure - I have as yet seen no great man. That which is great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it. It is the kingdom of the populace. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

He has achieved what Nietzsche liked to call 'The Great Health' - rare humour, valour, and resilience of spirit: despite being, or because he is, afflicted with Tourette's. ~ Oliver Sacks