Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
-
If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.
-
Learn to see - accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting-things-come-to-it; learning to defer judgment, to encircle and encompass the question on all sides.
-
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.
-
Our salvation lies not in knowing, but in creating!
-
A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.
-
I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say No.
-
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.
-
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
-
I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.
-
Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit.
-
Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all.
-
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
-
If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion.
-
The possibility has been established for the production of...a master race, the future 'masters of the earth'...made to endure for millennia - a higher kind of men who...employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth.
-
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.
-
If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.
-
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.
-
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.
-
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.
-
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asketh: "Am I a dishonest player?" - for he is willing to succumb.
-
We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.
-
I no longer want to walk on worn soles.
-
Vorrecht der Grösse. - Es ist das Vorrecht der Grösse, mit geringen Gaben hoch zu beglücken.
-
God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!