Friedrich Nietzsche quotes

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

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

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

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

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

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.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

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

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

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

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

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

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

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.

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

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

The "kingdom of Heaven" is a condition of the heart - not something that comes "upon the earth" or "after death."

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

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 true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

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

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Art is the proper task of life.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Everything done in weakness fails. Moral: Do nothing.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

God is dead.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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.

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

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

Success has always been a great liar.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

The doer alone learneth.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

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

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

There are no facts, only interpretations.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

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

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

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness.

What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and all the weak: Christianity.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

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

A few hours of mountain climbing turn a villain and a saint into two rather equal creature. Exhaustion is the shortest way to equality and fraternity, and liberty is added eventually by sleep.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

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

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

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

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

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

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.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

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

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

Errors of haste are seldom committed singly. The first time a man always does too much. And precisely on that account he commits a second error, and then he does too little.

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

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.

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

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

Gaze long into the abyss, and the abyss gazes into you.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

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

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

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

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?

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

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."

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

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

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

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

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

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

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

It is not the lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

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

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

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

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.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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

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

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

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

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

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.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

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

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

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.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Plato was a bore.

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

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of "eternity"; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

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

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

The lie is a condition of life.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

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.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

These people abstain, it is true: but the bitch Sensuality glares enviously out of all they do.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

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.

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.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

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.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

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

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

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

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

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

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

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

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.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Woman was God's second mistake.

Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.

Women are quite capable of entering into a friendship with a man, but to keep it going that takes a little physical antipathy as well.

Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it - to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.