Quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Friedrich Nietzsche. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtʃə] or [ˈniːtsʃə]; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history.
He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900.
Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power.
He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and the doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from figures such as Socrates, Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, his sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism; 20th-century scholars contested this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available.
Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th and early-21st century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, psychology, politics, and popular culture.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Without music, life would be a mistake... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.

Mankind must work continually to produce individual great human beings - this and nothing else is the task... for the question is this : How can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest significance? Only by living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.
Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and most modern serpents.
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.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
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.

Battle not with monsters, lest you become one and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors -- walking, leaping, climbing, dancing, preferably on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful.

As soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position and consequently my arguments! You have to be the victim of the same passion!

We have to be careful that in throwing out the devil, we don't throw out the best part of ourselves.

There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.

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.

At times, our strengths propel us so far forward we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them.

This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!

In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required -- acting as though we do not see through the motives of their actions.

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.

Immature is the love of the youth, and immature his hatred of man and earth. His mind and the wings of his spirit are still tied down and heavy.

In the world of high finance the shilling of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man.

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

In our own presence, we all pretend to be simpler than we are: thus we take a break from our fellow human beings.

Whether in conversation we generally agree or disagree with others is largely a matter of habit: the one tendency makes as much sense as the other.

For believe me: The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously.

There is always one too many around me, thus thinks the hermit. Always one times one eventually that makes two. I and me are always too deep in conversation.

The charm of knowledge would be small indeed, were it not that there is so much shame to be overcome on the way to it.

We would not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that.

Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it, that is all.

Acknowledge your will and speak to us all, This alone is what I will to be! Hang your own penal code up above you: we want to be its enforcers!

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

One does not attack a person merely to hurt and conquer him, but perhaps merely to become conscious of one's own strength.

One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow; otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory!

Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.

When a man reaches his maturity in understanding and in years, the feeling comes over him that his father was wrong to beget him.

People have always wanted to 'improve' human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgement.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

Not necessity, not desire
- no, the love of power is
the demon of men.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.

What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.

Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which has no history is definable.

A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach.

It is not in our hands to prevent our birth; but we can correct this mistake -- for in some cases it is a mistake.

We evaluate the services that anyone renders to us according to the value he puts on them, not according to the value they have for us.

For fanaticism is the only form of willpower that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain.

What I understand by philosopher: a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion.

The followers of a great man often put their eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.

Women want to serve, and this is where their happiness lies: but the free spirit does not want to be served, and this is where hishappiness lies.

Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but rather spirits- of-wine: they can catch fire, and then they give off heat.

In many people, incidentally, the gift of having good friends is much greater than the gift of being a good friend.

I live in my own place -- have never copied anyone even half, and at any master who lacks the grace -- to laugh at himself -- I laugh.

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.

Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood not our pain.

Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strangers soundeth the precept: Die at the right time!

For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.

Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions ... I abhore Christianity with a deadly hatred.

If that glad message of your Bible were written in your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority of that book in such stiff-necked fashion.

All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has ever escaped from their hands alive.

However closely people are attached to one another, their mutual horizon nonetheless includes all four compass directions, and nowand again they notice it.

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.

In conversation we are sometimes confused by the tone of our own voice, and mislead to make assertions that do not at all correspond to our opinions.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.

One who dresses in rags that have been washed clean dresses cleanly to be sure, but raggedly nonetheless.

The sensible author writes for no other posterity than his own -- that is, for his age -- so as to be able even then to take pleasure in himself.

The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling on its own, a prime movement, a sacred Yes.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

Brave people may be persuaded to an action by representing it as being more dangerous than it really is.

The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing.

Assuming that we have trained our imagination to denounce the past, we will not suffer much from unfulfilled wishes.
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