Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Success has always been a great liar.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ‚divine service.‘

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

The ‚kingdom of Heaven‘ is a condition of the heart – not something that comes ‚upon the earth‘ or ‚after death.‘

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The lie is a condition of life.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.