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.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

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

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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

Woman was God's second mistake.

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

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

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.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Art is the proper task of life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Fear is the mother of morality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

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

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

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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

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

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

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

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

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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

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

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

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

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

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

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

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

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

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

Success has always been a great liar.

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

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

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

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

The doer alone learneth.

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

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

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

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

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

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