Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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What, then is truth?... Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.
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In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies.
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To one who is accustomed to thinking a lot, every new thought that he hears or reads about immediately appears as a link in a chain.
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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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The higher culture an individual attains, the less field there is left for mockery and scorn.
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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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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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A nation usually renews its youth on a political sick-bed, and there finds again the spirit which it had gradually lost in seeking and maintaining power.
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There still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank. They designate themselves simply by their superiority in power (as "the powerful," "the masters," "the commanders") or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as "the rich," "the possessors" (this is the meaning of 'Arya,' and of corresponding words in Iranian and Slavic).
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I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.
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Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
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He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.
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We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have passed it on.
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The courage of all one really knows comes but late in life.
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Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.
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We come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious indeed; and moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint.
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It is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself.
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But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!
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Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying--that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire.
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We, however, want to become those we are--human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves. To that end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense--while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics or were constructed so as to contradict it. Therefore: long live physics! And even more so that which compels us to turn to physics--our honesty!
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There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
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There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated.
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Love as a passion – it is our European specialty – must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.
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Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.