Quotes by
Friedrich Nietzsche |
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900 , German philosopher
German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most-influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. | 77 quotes | 15,180 visits |
Quotations
| • | I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you. 65 |
| • | He who has a “why” to live for can bear almost any “how”. 24 |
| • | There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil. 18 |
| • | God is dead. 17 |
| • | I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. 17 |
| • | What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon. 15 |
| • | Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar. 14 |
| • | Which? Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders? 14 |
| • | In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. 14 |
| • | The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. 14 |
| • | A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies. 13 |
| • | Forgetting our intentions is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity. 12 |
| • | Love is blind. Friendship closes its eyes. 11 |
| • | 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. 10 |
| • | What does not kill me, makes me stronger. 10 |
| • | Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. 10 |
| • | Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality. 10 |
| • | I hate who steals my solitude, without really offer me in exchange company. 10 |
| • | Without music, life would be a mistake. 9 |
| • | They muddy the water, to make it seem deep 9 |
| • | Vivere pericolosamente. To live dangerously. (the phrase in its Italian version was popularized by Mussolini) 8 |
| • | The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. 8 |
| • | Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. 8 |
| • | The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man. 8 |
| • | Woman was God’s second mistake. 8 |
| • | The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared such a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? This question is one which ought to be studied. 8 |
| • | And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. 8 |
| • | One's own self is well hidden from one's own self: of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up. 8 |
| • | Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen. 7 |
| • | When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you. 7 |
| • | Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is. 7 |
| • | Invisible threads are the strongest ties. 7 |
| • | What is the seal of liberation? — No longer being ashamed in front of oneself. 6 |
| • | To live alone one must be an animal or a god - says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both: a philosopher. 6 |
| • | It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. 6 |
| • | In heaven, all the interesting people are missing. 6 |
| • | No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone. 6 |
| • | I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance. 6 |
| • | We have art in order not to die of the truth. 6 |
| • | That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil. 6 |
| • | It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book. 6 |
| • | A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling. 6 |
| • | Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty. 6 |
| • | Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler. 5 |
| • | To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle which even the apes might subscribe. 5 |
| • | The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest. 5 |
| • | Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman. 5 |
| • | To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is. 5 |
| • | It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them! 5 |
| • | A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation. 5 |
| • | Love for life is still possible, only one loves differently: it is like love for a woman whom one does not trust. 5 |
| • | There are no facts, only interpretations. 4 |
| • | What is now decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our reasons. 4 |
| • | Plato is boring. 4 |
| • | In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. 4 |
| • | The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding — in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. 4 |
| • | We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. 4 |
| • | It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters. 4 |
| • | We cannot help but see Socrates as the turning-point, the vortex of world history. 3 |
| • | Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good. 3 |
| • | Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow. 3 |
| • | Some are born posthumously. 3 |
| • | “Forgive us our virtues.” That is what we should ask of our neighbors. 3 |
| • | An aphorism is an audacity. 3 |
| • | When virtue has slept, she will get up more refreshed. 2 |
| • | We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed. 2 |
| • | Morality is herd instinct in the individual. 2 |
| • | A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. 2 |
| • | The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. 2 |
| • | I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, I would rather be a satyr than a saint. 2 |
| • | That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. 2 |
| • | Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. 2 |
| • | The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness. 2 |
| • | The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather a condition of it. 2 |
| • | There may be Herostratoi who set fire to the temples in which their image is worshiped. 2 |
| • | It is very strange of God to learn Greek when He decided to become a writer and then to learn it so badly. 2 |
Personal Stories
| • | You say you're a pessimist, but I happen to know that you're in the habit of practicing your flute for two hours every evening. (criticizing Schopenhauer) 6 |
