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.

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

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

Fear is the mother of morality.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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

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

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

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

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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.

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

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

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

Woman was God's second mistake.

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

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

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.

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

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

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

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

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

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

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

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?

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

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

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

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

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

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Art is the proper task of life.

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

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

Success has always been a great liar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

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

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

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

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

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

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

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

The doer alone learneth.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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

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