Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Without music, life would be a mistake.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

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

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

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.

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

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

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

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.

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

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

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

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

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

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

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.

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

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?

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 advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Man is the cruelest animal.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

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

Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

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

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

you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

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

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.

There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.

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

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

Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

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

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

In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

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

Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.

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

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

Art is the proper task of life.

What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'.

Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.

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

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

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.

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.

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

Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.

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

Become who you are!

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

Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

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

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

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

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

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

...throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.

My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

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

Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.

True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.

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

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Meaning and morality of One's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities and the healthy person explores as many of them as posible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky.

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

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.

Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.