Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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. . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!
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The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.
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Was that life? Well then, once more!
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Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me - and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.
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The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self.
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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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He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.
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The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship.
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What is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil.
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The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.
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Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
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I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.
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The quest for philosophical beginnings is idle, for everywhere in all beginnings we find only the crude, the unformed, the empty and the ugly. What matters in all things is the higher levels.
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'God himself cannot exist without wise men' - Luther said, and was right. But 'God can exist even less without unwise men' - that good old Luther did not say.
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The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.
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Logic, too, also rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption that there areequal things, that the same thing is identical at different points in time: but this science arose as a result of the opposite belief (that such things actually exist in the real world). And it is the same with mathematics, which would certainly never have arisen if it had been understood from the beginning that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly straight line, a true circle, and absolute measure.
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Those are my enemies: they want to overthrow and to construct nothing themselves. They say: "All that is worthless"--and want to create no value themselves.
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What good is a book that does not even transport us beyond all books?
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The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.
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He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others.
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In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.
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Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.
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Man demands truth and fulfills this demand in moral intercourse with other men; this is the basis of all social life. One anticipates the unpleasant consequences of reciprocal lying. From this there arises the duty of truth. We permit epic poets to lie because we expect no detrimental consequences in this case. Thus the lie is permitted where it is considered something pleasant. Assuming that it does no harm, the lie is beautiful and charming.
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Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.