Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
Most popular Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
Plato was a bore.
Learn to love your fate.
Man is the cruelest animal.
Woman was God's second mistake.
The last Christian died on the cross.
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
Facts do not exist; only interpretations.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Love is blind. Friendship closes its eyes.
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.
We have art to save ourselves from the truth.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Love is more afraid of change than destruction.
The mailman is the agent of impolite surprises.
By losing your goal—you have lost your way, too!
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
In every man a child is hidden that wants to play.
All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.
To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.
Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.
Sometimes the idiot and the genius are the same man.
It is our future that lays down the law of our today.
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.
God is a thought that makes crooked all that is straight.
Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.
Against boredom even the gods themselves struggle in vain.
He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
From people who merely pray we must become people who bless.
The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.
The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self.
The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth.
If we have our own "why" of life, we can bear almost any "how."
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Never to talk about oneself is a very refined form of hypocrisy.
He who has a why for which to live can bear with almost any how.
The value of a man can only be measured with regard to other men.
When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm.
Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter us and transform us.
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.
Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age.
When one has a great deal to put into it, a day has a hundred pockets.
Maturity means reacquiring the seriousness one had as a child at play.
It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than with a bad reputation.
If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.
A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.
Man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose.
A man must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises he makes.
If a man has a strong faith, he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.
If a man have a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.
Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.
The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a god.
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.
It is not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds.
Of all that is written, I love only what a man hath written with his blood.
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
One must separate from anything that forces one to repeat No again and again.
Which is it? Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book.
Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.
Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts.
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.
As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified.
Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that we were compelled to invent laughter.
You cannot learn to fly by flying. First you must learn to walk, to run, to climb, to dance.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
A man's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.
What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
What makes us heroic? Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature.
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.
So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author— and not to learn it better.
Those who know they are deep strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem deep strive for obscurity.
Every tradition grows ever more venerable — the more remote is its origin, the more confused that origin is.
The world itself is the will to power—and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power—and nothing else!
Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful....distrust all those who talk much of their justice.
That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
It is not true that every man has a price. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
Beggars should be abolished entirely! Verily, it is annoying to give to them and it is annoying not to give to them.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic.
"Every man has his price." This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
What actually fills you with indignation as regards suffering is not suffering in itself but the pointlessness of suffering.
Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains ... But it can put mountains where there are none.
Insects sting, not in malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics: they desire our blood, not our pain.
In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.
God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
I understand by "freedom of spirit" something quite definite...the unconditional will to say No where it is dangerous to say No.
We praise or blame according to whether the one or the other offers a greater opportunity for our power of judgment to shine out.
A good maxim is too hard for the teeth of time and whole millennia cannot consume it, even though it serves to nourish every age.
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.
Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms. Now it is persuasive, even flattering, and at other times merely commanding.
In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required—acting as though we do not see through the motives of their actions.
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has drawn your soul aloft, what has mastered it and at the same time blessed it?
Wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force its way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique human being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is ever be put together a second time.
Not necessity, not desire—no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything—health, food, a place to live, entertainment—they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble.
Without music life would be a mistake.
He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.
The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of its diseases is called man.
It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.
