Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality -- where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power.
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State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people’.
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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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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 was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.
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Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.
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Impoliteness is frequently the sign of an awkward modesty that loses its head when surprised and hopes to conceal this with rudeness.
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A refined nature is vexed by knowing that some one owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to some one.
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The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects . . .
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There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.
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That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
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Schatten in der Flamme. - Die Flamme ist sich selber nicht so hell, als den Anderen, denen sie leuchtet: so auch der Weise.
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Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia, - let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores.
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One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
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The finest and healthiest thing about science is, as in the mountains, the brisk air blowing around in it.--The spiritually delicate (such as artists) shun and slander science owing to this air.
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History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.
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How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force!
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If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.
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I teach the No to all that makes weak--that exhausts. I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that pride.
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The most dangerous physicians are those born actors who imitate born physicians with a perfectly deceptive guile.
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Our body is simply a social structure made of many souls.
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Anything which is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.
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For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
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The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.