Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.
The great end of art is to strike the imagination with the power of a soul that refuses to admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world.
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
Above all, there is no exception to this rule: that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority.
Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.
What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent : it is indecent to be a Christian today.
What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest possesses when, in the midst of nature and the world, he feels himself to be man!
Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.
Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride and have no prospect of great conquests; for them the easy prey - and that is what all who suffer are - is enchanting.
I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands. Thus I now love only my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea; for this I bid my sails search and search.
A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises. One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.
In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge, but egoism of a different quality.
Modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible - hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion.
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies
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.
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.
There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated
How far is truth susceptible of embodiment? That is the question, that is the experiment.
There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my "evil eye" for this world, which is also my "evil ear".
Mastery has been achieved when one neither makes a mistake nor hesitates in the performance.
Posthumous men-myself, for example-are not as well understood as timely ones, but we are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood-hence our authority.
Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing, sanguinary, insatiate monster.
We ought to fear a man who hates himself, for we are at risk of becoming victims of his anger and revenge. Let us then try to lure him into self-love.
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity.
Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves.
Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.