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Im Gebirge der Wahrheit kletterst du nie umsonst: Entweder du kommst schon heute weiter hinauf oder übst deine Kräfte, um morgen höher steigen zu können.
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There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
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Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.
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One should not wrongly reify 'cause' and 'effect,' as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now 'naturalizes' in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it 'effects' its end; one should use 'cause' and 'effect' only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication-not for explanation.
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A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
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One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
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And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!
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A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers.
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Modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible - hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion.
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I awoke you from your sleep because I saw that you were having a nightmare. And now you are cross and say to me: "What are we supposed to do now? Everything is still night!" You ingrates! You should go to sleep again and dream better.
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Time flies apace-we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it.
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To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one's life--all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.
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Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!
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Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.
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It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.
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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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In every party there is one person who, through his dotingly credulous enunciation of party principles, incites the other members to defection.
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Die Leugner des Zufalls. - 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.'
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All things considered, I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music. For I seemed condemned to the society of Germans. If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take to hashish. Well, I had to take to Wagner...
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Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.
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If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.
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Daß man wird, was man ist, setzt voraus, daß man nicht im entferntesten ahnt, was man ist.
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Each word of Heraclitus expresses the pride and the majesty of truth, but of truth grasped in intuitions rather than attained by the rope ladder of logic.
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I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.