Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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The thought is merely a sign, as the word is merely a sign for the thought.
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Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?
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The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you - is to die soon.
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Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt.
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Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme [in German], and they do indeed do more than just rhyme.
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There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
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More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.
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Natürlicher ist unsere Stellung in politicis: wir sehen Probleme der Macht, des Quantums Macht gegen ein anderes Quantum. Wir glauben nicht an ein Recht, das nicht auf der Macht ruht, sich durchzusetzen: wir empfinden alle Rechte als Eroberungen.
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A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power.
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Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.
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We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.
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Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time - in the form of legislation and customs.
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The desert grows: woe to him in whom deserts hide ...
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For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
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What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they..
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For such is man: a Theological Dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times - provided however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as true. Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will. Fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system.
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Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher.
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Eigene Meinungen. - Die erste Meinung, welche uns einfällt, wenn wir plötzlich über eine Sache befragt werden, ist gewöhnlich nicht unsere eigene, sondern nur die landläufige, unserer Kaste, Stellung, Abkunft zugehörige; die eigenen Meinungen schwimmen selten oben auf.
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Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.
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Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.
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At one time or another, almost every politician needs an honest man so badly that, like a ravenous wolf, he breaks into a sheep-fold: not to devour the ram he has stolen, however, but rather to conceal himself behind its wooly back.
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Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the longest and most ancient part of human history teaches - and in punishment there is so much that is festive!
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To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
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One is most dishonest to one's god: he is not allowed to sin.