Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Man would sooner have the Void for his purpose than be void of Purpose.
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Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
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The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate things.
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Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
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In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art.
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Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.
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When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands or falls with faith in God.
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A man as he ought to be: that sounds to us as insipid as 'a tree as it ought to be.'
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The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling on its own, a prime movement, a sacred Yes.
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That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.
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Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
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One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:-we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.
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Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.
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I would only believe in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!
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If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
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Success has always been a great liar.
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Why is it that wellnesses are not as contagious as illnesses--generally speaking, but also especially regarding taste? Or are there epidemics of health?
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If one seeks relief from unbearable pressure, one is to eat hashish.
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It is only those who know how to feel that "this is not good" who devise improvements.
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O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!
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Some mothers need happy children; others need unhappy ones-otherwise they cannot prove their maternal virtues.
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One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.
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The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.
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Follow in the footsteps of your fathers' virtue! How could you hope to climb high unless your fathers' will climbs with you?