Top 121 Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

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

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.

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

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

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

Art is the proper task of life.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

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

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman without a single drop of bad blood – certainly not German blood.

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

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

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

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

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

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

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

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.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

Success has always been a great liar.

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.

The word ‘Christianity’ is already a misunderstanding – in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

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

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

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.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

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

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

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

Whoever has witnessed another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

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

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

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.

No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

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.

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?

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

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

The lie is a condition of life.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

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.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

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

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

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

There are no facts, only interpretations.

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

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

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

The doer alone learneth.

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.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

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.

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

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

Love is not consolation. It is light.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

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

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

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

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

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

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

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

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.

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

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

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

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

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

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

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