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.

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

The doer alone learneth.

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

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

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

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

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

Woman was God's second mistake.

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.

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

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

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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.

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

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Success has always been a great liar.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear is the mother of morality.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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.

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?

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.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art is the proper task of life.

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