Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think!
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Truth is only an illusion we have forgotten is an illusion.
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One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.
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The machine is impersonal, it takes the pride away from a piece of work, the individual merits and defects that go along with allwork that is not done by a machine--which is to say, its little bit of humanity.
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Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth.
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In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.
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One must learn to be a sponge if one wants to be loved by hearts that overflow.
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The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which calls to him: 'Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you yourself.'
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Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
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Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned.
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Away from God and gods did this will lure me: what would there be to create if gods existed?
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Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.
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Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance.
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One must know how to conserve oneself- the best test of independence.
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Be generous in nature and thought; for this wins respect and gives confidence and power.
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Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
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Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.
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At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service. What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart...that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience.
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Though the favourites of the Gods die young, they also live eternally in the company of Gods.
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Men subsequently put whatever is newly learned or experienced to use as a plowshare, perhaps even as a weapon: but women immediately include it among their ornaments.
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I fly in dreams, I know it is my privilege, I do not recall a single situation in dreams when I was unable to fly. To execute every sort of curve and angle with a light impulse, a flying mathematics - that is so distinct a happiness that it has permanently suffused my basic sense of happiness.
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Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.
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There is one thing one has to have either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.
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Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.