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.

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

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

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

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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

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

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

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

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

The lie is a condition of life.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

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

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

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

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

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

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

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

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

Fear is the mother of morality.

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.

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

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

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

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

Success has always been a great liar.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The doer alone learneth.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

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

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

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

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

Art is the proper task of life.

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

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

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

Woman was God's second mistake.

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

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

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

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

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

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

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