Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.
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A life without music is an error.
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There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.
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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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If you buy the why, the how is infinitely bearable.
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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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There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
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The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.
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In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many.
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My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity.
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Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.
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You say a good cause justifies any war; but I say a good war justifies any cause.
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Mastery.- We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.
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Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.
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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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The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
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It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!
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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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I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule -- and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.)
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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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The way to transmute your iron duty into gold in everyone's eyes is this: always deliver more than you promise.
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Where one despises, one cannot wage war.
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What makes us heroic?--Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.
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Mastery has been achieved when one neither makes a mistake nor hesitates in the performance.