Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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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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Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.
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Knowing things halfway is a greater success than knowing things completely: it takes things to be simpler than they really are andso makes its opinions more easily understandable and persuasive.
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A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.
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Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.
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Die Leugner des Zufalls. - 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.'
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A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.
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Shackled heart, free spirit.--Whoever binds his heart tightly and imprisons it may indulge his spirit in many liberties: I have already said that once. But no one believes me unless he already knows.
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Great intellects are skeptical.
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The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.
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Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind.
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As though "the Truth" were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors!
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Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.
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Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile.
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A little health now and again is the ailing person's best remedy.
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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.
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Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves.
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However unchristian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill feeling towards myself.
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Once and for all, there are many things I choose not to know.--Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge.
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Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
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Never to read another book that was born and baptized (with ink) at the same time.
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A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
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Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood not our pain.
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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.