Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays.
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I desire that your conjectures should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods.
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Sleep is no mean art.
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Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.
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The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.
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It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.
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Man, a hybrid of plant and ghost.
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Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.
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Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
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Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without "taste," at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost.
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Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.
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One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people.
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I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, I would rather be a satyr than a saint.
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Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond.
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Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.
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We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
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In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
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I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.
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Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge. ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.
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Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.
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There they laugh: they do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.
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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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Um aber unsere Klassiker so falsch beurteilen und so beschimpfend ehren zu können, muß man sie gar nicht mehr kennen: und dies ist die allgemeine Tatsache. Denn sonst müßte man wissen, daß es nur eine Art gibt, sie zu ehren, nämlich dadurch, daß man fortfährt, in ihrem Geiste und mit ihrem Mute zu suchen, und dabei nicht müde wird.
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What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.