Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.
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A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect.
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One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole - there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole...But nothing exists apart from the whole!
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There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live - this very difficulty being necessary.
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It is an end with priests and gods, if man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself - it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alones is mortality: Thou shalt not know.
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Even the most honest writer lets slip a word too many when he wants to round off a period.
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Every great love brings with it the cruel idea of killing the object of its love so that it may be removed once and for all from the wicked game of change: for love dreads change even more than annihilation.
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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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What a dissimilarity we see in walking, swimming, and flying. And yet it is one and the same motion: it is just that the load- bearing capacity of the earth differs from that of the water, and that that of the water differs from that of the air! Thus we should also learn to fly as thinkers--and not imagine that we are thereby becoming idle dreamers!
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One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called "freedom."
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The heart and hand of those who always mete out become callous from always meting out.
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It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.
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There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.
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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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One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
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Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall your eye show to me: free for what?
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Tolerance is a proof of distrust in one's own ideals.
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Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?
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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.
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One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
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Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence - not detachment and objectivity.
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So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.
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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!
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How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?