Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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...to the priestly class - decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of 'good' and 'bad,' 'true' and 'false' in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.
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Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master… Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.
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Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.
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Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
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The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.
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Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard.
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Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.
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To get into just those situations where sham virtues will not suffice, but rather where, as with the ropedancer on his rope, one either falls or stands--or gets down.
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Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.
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To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.
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[Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.
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Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.
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In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual conscience was at least exposed by that!
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In the world of high finance the shilling of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man.
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Love is more afraid of change than destruction.
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The greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it. - What does not destroy makes me stronger.
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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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Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.
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To go on vegetating in cowardly dependence on physicians and machinations, after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, that ought to prompt a profound contempt in society.
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Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases -- which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal.
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"What is good?" ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: "To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching."
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Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
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These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?
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All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.