Best 2418 quotes of Friedrich Nietzsche on MyQuotes

A beautiful woman seductively dressed will never catch cold no matter how low-cut her gown.

A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.

A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.

A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays.

About sacrifice and the offering of sacrifices, sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on: but they have never been allowed to have their say.

About what we neither know nor feel precisely while awake-whether we have a good or a bad conscience toward a certain person-our dreams instruct us fully and unambiguously.

Above all, there is no exception to this rule: that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority.

A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian.

A certain type of person strives to become a master over all, and to extend his force, his will to power, and to subdue all that resists it. But he encounters the power of others, and comes to an arrangement, a union, with those that are like him: thus they work together to serve the will to power. And the process goes on.

A change of values - that means, a change of the creators of values. He who has to be a creator always has to destroy.

All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.

Acknowledge your will and speak to us all, "This alone is what I will to be!" Hang your own penal code up above you: we want to be its enforcers!

Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.

Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say "thus it shall be!", it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past - they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer.

A declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed! ... Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the end of the people or the feminine, works in favor of universal suffrage, i.e. the domination of the inferior men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair to light and the bar of judgment.

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

A Dionysian life task needs the hardness of the hammer and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy to be found even in destruction.

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

A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity - and sleep finally adds to them liberty.

A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.

A friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy is a friend we would rather have as an enemy.

After all, what would be "beautiful" if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?.

After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.

Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.

Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.

A good seat on a horse steals away your opponent's courage and your onlooker's heart-what reason is there to attack? Sit like one who has conquered?

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

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

A heart full of courage and cheerfulness needs a little danger from time to time, or the world gets unbearable.

Ah, how little you know of human happiness - you comfortable and benevolent people! For happiness and unhappiness are brother and sister - or even twins who grow up together - or in your case - remain small together!

A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.

Ah, only he who knows where he sails, knows what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!

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

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers.

Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.

A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises. One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.

A life without music is an error.

A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves- and who want to go where I want to go.

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at the end, for a pleasant death.