Friedrich Nietzsche – 121 Quotes

Share the love

121 Quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The doer alone learneth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Art is the proper task of life.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ‘divine service.’

– Friedrich Nietzsche

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The ‘kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart – not something that comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death.’

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Fear is the mother of morality.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Woman was God’s second mistake.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god but who knows my god?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Success has always been a great liar.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The lie is a condition of life.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life their Christianity, for instance.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is not consolation. It is light.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

‘Evil men have no songs.’ How is it that the Russians have songs?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

– Friedrich Nietzsche

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep the truth is that they are not even shallow.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Women are considered deep – why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

– Friedrich Nietzsche