Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
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We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
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Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.
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Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.
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Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes--and calls it his pride.
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Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.
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Nobody thanks a witty man for politeness when he puts himself on a par with a society in which it would not be polite to show one's wit.
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No more fiction for us: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.
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When I seek another word for 'music', I never find any other word than 'Venice'.
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The greatest cure for love is still that time honoured medicine - love returned.
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Knapsack of the Metaphysicians.- Those who boast so mightily of the scientificality of their metaphysics should receive no answer; it is enough to pluck at the bundle which, with a certain degree of embarrassment, they keep concealed behind their back; if one succeeds in opening it, the products of that scientificality come to light, attended by their blushes: a dear little Lord God, a nice little immortality, perhaps a certain quantity of spiritualism, and in any event a whole tangled heap of 'wretched poor sinner' and Pharisee arrogance.
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I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.
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In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person's mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.
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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.
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Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say "thus it shall be!", it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past - they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer.
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The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.
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The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.
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How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!--and such reverence is a bridge to love.--For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture "the enemy" as the man of ressentiment conceives him--and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy," "the Evil One," and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a "good one"--himself!
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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.
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Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon; women at once make it into an ornament.
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My idea of paradise is a straight line to goal.
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When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.
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Since men do not really respect anything unless it was established long ago and has developed slowly over time, those who want tokeep on living after their death must take worry not only about their future generations but even more about their past: that is why tyrants of all kinds (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that it will appear as a preparation and stepladder to themselves.
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The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.