Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.
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The surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony.
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Nothing seems to me to be rarer today then genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that this plant finds the mild atmosphere of our culture unendurable. Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief one already has.
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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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How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.
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And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once! And let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!
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In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: he leaves the city.
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The doctrine of equality! … But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice … 'Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal' - that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, 'never make the unequal equal'.
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Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness).
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Resistance - that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
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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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The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills.
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Many find their heart when they have lost their head.
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Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart--and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.
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One has to know the size of one's stomach.
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Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.
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You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that.
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Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
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This is the antinomy: Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence.
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From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written.
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Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.
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Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid).
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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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We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.