Friedrich Nietzsche

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Insanity in individuals is rare – but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Hold a true friend with both your hands.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen. Few in pursuit of the goal.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

One ought to hold on to one’s heart. For if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head
too.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

Only sick music makes money today.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Distrust in all whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from
life is to live dangerously!
– Friedrich Nietzsche

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions
destroyed.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

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

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than with a bad reputation.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the
party and out the other side too soon.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?
– Friedrich Nietzsche

The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by
far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because
it brings against them its most formidable weapons.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which
it is expressed.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Two great European narcotics: alcohol and Christianity.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Man is the cruelest animal.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase
of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that
punishment tames man, but does not make him “better.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Plato was a bore.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, women! They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or
you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book – what
everyone else does not say in a whole book.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

We cannot help but see Socrates as the turning-point, the vortex of world history.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

What does your conscience say? – “You should become the person you are.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Every tradition grows ever more venerable – the more remote its origin, the more confused
that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition
finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding
it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among
themselves, “These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that
whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?” There is nothing intrinsically wrong
with such an argument – though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, “We
have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a
tender lamb.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way –
not at all or in an interesting manner.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

The man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the
philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation:
for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains
himself for life.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is
why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way
that it sounds like folly.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Art is the supreme task and the truly metaphysical activity in this life.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment – but many other
things ceased as well! Woman was God’s second mistake.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called “Ego.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and
mean actions to fear.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

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

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems,
there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

The doer alone learneth.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves
disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of
belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things
they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence
in our opponent.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the
world.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurence to which they owe their power. In
the actual act of deception they are overcome by belief in themselves: it is this which then
speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those around them.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Our innermost being, our common foundation, experiences dreams with profound pleasure and
joyful necessity.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

Maturity means reacquiring the seriousness one had as a child at play.
– Friedrich Nietzsche