Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.
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One can lie with the mouth, but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
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... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.
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Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not possess a genius for ornamentation if she did not also possessan instinct for the secondary role.
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The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!
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In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.
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Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
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Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, is the consequence of courage, of toughness towards oneself, of sincerity to oneself.
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A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.
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What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.
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Someone said: "I have been prejudiced against myself from my earliest childhood: hence I find some truth in all blame and some stupidity in all praise. I generally estimate praise too poorly and blame too highly.
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We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?
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Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
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One who is unassuming in dealing with people exhibits his arrogance all the more strongly in dealing with things (city, state, society, age, mankind). That is his revenge.
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Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.
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If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy.
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Whether in conversation we generally agree or disagree with others is largely a matter of habit: the one tendency makes as much sense as the other.
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But let me open up my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not being a god! Hence, there areno gods. I drew this conclusion, to be sure--but now it draws me.
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The rising and falling of the scales of pride and humility sustain the brooding mind as well as the alternations of desire and peace of the soul.
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Both classically- and romantically-minded spirits-inasmuch as these two species always exist-occupy themselves with a vision of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.
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People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light.
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There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
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One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.