Quotations by Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Enemies]

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Sanity]

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Opinions]

Man is the cruelest animal.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Memory] [Promises]

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Memory]

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Lies]

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?

Friedrich Nietzsche

- More quotations on: [Love]

When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.

Friedrich Nietzsche

When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"

- More quotations on: [Love] [Sanity]

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Chapter 29

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153

Only sick music makes money today.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner, Section 5

- More quotations on: [Music]

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

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Foreword

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

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 16

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 2

Christianity is called the religion of pity.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, Section 7

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.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn, Sec. 297

- More quotations on: [Youth]

God is dead.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 108

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 116

- More quotations on: [Morality]

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 130

To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 158

We are always in our own company.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 166

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 191

- More quotations on: [Argument]

For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 283

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 381

- More quotations on: [Dance]

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 41

- More quotations on: [Questioning]

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (1899)

For men are not equal: thus speaks justice.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

- More quotations on: [Nobility]

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows

Plato is boring.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, What I owe to the Ancients