Friedrich nietzsche quotes

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

Life is the will to power; our natural desire to dominate and reshape the world to fit our own preferences and assert our personal strength to the fullest degree.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

Few are made for independence, it is the privilege of the strong.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would carry you across this river; but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: where does it lead? Do not ask, go along with it.

What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.

My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

A small revenge is more human than no revenge at all.

Become who you are. Make what only you can make.

In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.

I and me are always too deeply in conversation.

Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.

Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?

There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.

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

Loneliness is one thing, solitude another.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further.

The 'kingdom of God' is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come 'in a thousand years' it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.

Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal.

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.

Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

Do you want to have an easy life? Then always stay with the herd and lose yourself in the herd.

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

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

Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.

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

Only he who is man enough will release the woman in woman.

For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.

Every man has his price. This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.

The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.

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

You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

The purpose of criminal law is to punish the enemies of those in power.

There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering- do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness- was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality.

Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.

Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

People who live in an age of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know that there are other kinds of murder than by dagger or assault; they also know that whatever is well said is believed.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest

Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that's who you become most like.

Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.

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.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

All things that are truly great are at first thought impossible.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

The real question is: How much truth can I stand?

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

Who is better, they who promote truth over happiness, or happiness over truth?

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

The craving for equality can express itself either as a desire to pull everyone down to our own level (by belittling them, excluding them, tripping them up) or as a desire to raise ourselves up along with everyone else (by acknowledging them, helping them, and rejoicing in their success).

Everything matters. Nothing's important.

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

If the all powerful god controls satan he is an accomplice, and if he doesn't, he is not an all powerful god.

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done.

And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ''I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?

Every profound spirit needs a mask.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Those who are devoid of purpose will make the void their purpose.

you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.

To discover he is loved in return ought really to disenchant the lover with the beloved.

People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.

The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.

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.

He who obeys, does not listen to himself!

And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

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

There's no defense against stupidity.

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.

Man is the only animal that must be encouraged to live.

We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

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

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.

Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.

Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.

The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.