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Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
1844–1900 Germany
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (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. His critiques of contemporary culture, religion, and philosophy centered on a basic question regarding the foundation of values and morality.
Germany Composers Journalists Novelists Philosophers Also known as: Friedric Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo, Neitzsche
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274 quotes
We must know the right time to forget as well as the right time to remember, and instinctively see when it is necessary to feel historically and when unhistorically.
Every individual action, every individual mode of thought arouses dread; it is impossible to compute what precisely the rarer, choicer, more original spirits in the whole course of history have had to suffer through being felt as evil and dangerous, indeed through feeling themselves to be so. Under the dominion of the morality of custom, originality of every kind has acquired a bad conscience.
The Dawn of Day (1881)
For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.
Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)
Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.
In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless.... Everywhere and always their mouths have uttered the same sound - a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness with life, full of opposition to life.
That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
The Antichrist (1888)
To ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a will to dominate, a will to subjugate, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and obstacles and triumphant celebrations, is just as absurd as to ask weakness to express itself as strength.
The "kingdom of God" is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come "in a thousand years" — it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere...
The Antichrist (1888)
Die dummen Moralisten haben immer die Veredelung angestrebt ohne zugleich die Basis zu wollen: die leibliche Veradlichung [...][,] sie haben an’s Individuum gedacht und nicht an die Fortdauer des Edlen durch Zeugung. Kurzsichtig!
Our own opinions. The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about a matter is usually not our own, but only the customary one, appropriate to our caste, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface.
Faced with a world of “modern ideas” which would like to banish everyone into a corner and a “specialty,” a philosopher, if there could be a philosopher these days, would be compelled to establish the greatness of mankind, the idea of “greatness,” on the basis of his own particular extensive range and multiplicity, his own totality in the midst of diversity.
So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans.
... that Jesuitry of mediocrity, which spontaneously works for the destruction of the uncommon man and seeks to break every arched bow or—even better!—to relax it.
Man is for woman, a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883)
We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
The Antichrist (1895)
Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)
I have often been told of people who have been able to continue one and the same dream over three and more successive nights: facts which clearly show that our innermost being, our common foundation, experiences dreams with profound pleasure and joyful necessity.
The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable; intoxication. Intoxication must first have heightened the excitability of the entire machine: no art results before that happens.
In man, creator and created are united; in man in the material, the fragment, the surplus, the clay, the mud, the foolishness, the chaos; but in man also is the creator, the sculptor, the wielder of the hammer, the beholder of divinity, the seventh day.
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