Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Friedrich Nietzsche Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: Kingdom of Prussia
  • Born: Oct 15, 1844
  • Died: Aug 25, 1900

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.

Nietzsche's key ideas include perspectivism, the Will to Power, the "death of God", the Ìbermensch and eternal recurrence. One of the key tenets of his philosophy is the concept of "life-affirmation," which embraces the realities of the world in which we live over the idea of a world beyond. It further champions the creative powers of the individual to strive beyond social, cultural, and moral contexts. Nietzsche's attitude towards religion and morality was marked with atheism, psychologism and historism; he considered them to be human creations loaded with the error of confusing cause and effect. His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, and his influence remains substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical schools of existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism.

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

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

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

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

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

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

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

Fear is the mother of morality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Woman was God's second mistake.

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

The doer alone learneth.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

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

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

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

Success has always been a great liar.

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

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

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

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?

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

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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

The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'

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

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

Art is the proper task of life.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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