Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober--this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.
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Improvements are invented only by those who can feel that something is not good.
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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 thought is merely a sign, as the word is merely a sign for the thought.
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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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No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
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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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No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
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There are two things a real man likes - danger and play; and he likes woman because she is the most dangerous of play things.
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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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Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.
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In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search.
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One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.
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Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt.
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Do not forget, man, consumed by lust:you-are the stone, the desert, are death ...
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We count the courtesies accorded us by unpopular people as offenses.
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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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A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power.
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The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces.
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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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It is certain that the Jew, if he desired-or if they were driven to it, as the antisemites seem to wish-could now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe; that they are not working or planning for that end is equally sure... The resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary.
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Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
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Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.
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Seducing one's neighbor to a good opinion and then afterwards believing devoutly in this neighbor's opinion--who can match women in this clever ploy?