Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent.
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Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration […]; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour […]. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist" from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".
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Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.
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The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
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I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.
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In the stream.- Mighty waters draw much stone and rubble along with them; mighty spirits many stupid and bewildered heads.
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One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
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We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"--and we give it.
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The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.
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Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed.
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After all, what would be "beautiful" if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?.
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In music the passions enjoy themselves.
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We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows - not even God.
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There's no defense against stupidity.
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Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness.
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What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.
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The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.
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Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.
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The most welcome joke to me is the one that takes the place of a heavy, not altogether innocuous thought, at once a cautionary hint of the finger and a flash of the eye.
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Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
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A Path to Equality. - A few hours of mountain climbing turn a rascal and a saint into two pretty similar creatures. Fatigue is the shortest way to Equality and Fraternity-and, in the end, Liberty will surrender to Sleep.
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One has been a poor spectator of life if one has not witnessed the hand - that kills from mercy.
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Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there!
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I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.