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Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] German

Rank: 3
Poet (with poems)

Existentialism, Expressionism, Neoromanticism, Nihilism, Philosophy, Psychology

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.

Truth, Power, Love, Art, Great, Friendship, Life, Men, Women, Death, Good, Knowledge, Religion, War, Wisdom, Alone, Dad, Experience, Faith, Marriage, Music, Respect, Time, Age, Best, Chance, Education, Fear, Food, Forgiveness, Freedom, Future, God, Graduation, Health, History, Home, Hope, Learning, Nature, Relationship, Strength, Success

Quote	Tags	Rank
We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.	Life, Love	34
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.	Love, Relationship	101
Without music, life would be a mistake.	Life, Music	102
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.		104
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.		105
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.		106
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.		107
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.		108
The doer alone learneth.	Alone, Graduation	109
Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.	Friendship, Love	110
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.		111
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.	Power, Time, Truth	112
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.	Strength	113
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.		114
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.	Age, Marriage	115
There are no facts, only interpretations.	Truth	116
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.	Life	117
Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.		118
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.	Truth	119
What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.		120
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.	Best, War	121
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.		122
It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.		123
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.	Dad, Good	124
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.		125
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.	Food, Health, Love, Men, Power	126
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.	Friendship, Love, Marriage	201
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.	Learning	202
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.	Great	203
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.	Great	204
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?	Truth	205
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.		206
When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.		207
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.	Truth	208
We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.		209
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.	Good	210
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.	Great	211
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.	Art, Great	212
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.	Forgiveness	213
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.		214
The future influences the present just as much as the past.	Future	215
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.	Faith	216
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.	Love	217
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.	Friendship	218
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.		219
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.	Freedom	220
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.		221
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.		222
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?		223
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.	Faith	224
People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.		225
Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.		226
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.	God, Time	301
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.		302
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.		303
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.	Truth	304
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.	Truth	305
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.		306
The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'	Death	307
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.	Good, Power	308
We have art in order not to die of the truth.	Art, Truth	309
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.	Home	310
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.		311
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.	Power	312
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.		313
Fear is the mother of morality.	Fear	314
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.		315
The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.		316
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.	Power	317
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.		318
Success has always been a great liar.	Great, Success	319
When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.		320
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.	Power, War	321
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.	Wisdom	322
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.		323
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.		324
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.		325
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.		326
I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.		401
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.	Truth	402
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.		403
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.		404
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.	Truth	405
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.		406
Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.	Men	407
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.	Women	408
Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.	Men, Women	409
Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.	Friendship	410
Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.		411
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?	Death	412
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.		413
Woman was God's second mistake.		414
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.		415
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.	Hope	416
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.	Alone	417
Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.		418
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.		419
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.		420
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.	Women	421
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.	Truth	422
Art is the proper task of life.	Art, Life	423
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?		424
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.		425
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.		426
To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.	Experience	501
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.		502
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.	Truth	503
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.	Education	504
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.		505
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.	Art	506
Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.		507
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.	Religion	508
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.	Knowledge, Wisdom	509
This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.		510
Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?		511
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'	Art	512
The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.		513
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.	Dad	514
There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.		515
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.		516
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.	Knowledge, Nature	517
He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.		518
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.	Death	519
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.	Truth	520
Idleness is the parent of psychology.		521
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.		522
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.		523
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.		524
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.		525
Love is not consolation. It is light.		526
The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!	Power	601
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.	Respect	602
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?		603
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.		604
There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.	Chance	605
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.		606
There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.		607
We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.		608
What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?		609
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.		610
Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.		611
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.	War	612
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.		613
It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.	Women	614
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.		615
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.		616
The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.		617
Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.		618
In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.		619
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.	Truth	620
Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.		621
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.		622
When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.		623
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.		624
I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman without a single drop of bad blood - certainly not German blood.		625
Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.		626
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.		701
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.		702
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.	Truth	703
In music the passions enjoy themselves.	Music	704
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.		705
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.		706
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.	Religion	707
The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.		708
Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.		709
I love those who do not know how to live for today.		710
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.		711
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.		712
Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.		713
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.		714
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.	Knowledge	715
Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.		716
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.		717
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.	History	718
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.	Experience	719
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.		720
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.		721
The lie is a condition of life.		722
Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.		723
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.		724
What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!		725
In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.		726
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.		801
It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.		802
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.		803
Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.		804
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.		805
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.		806
There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.	Religion	807
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.	Respect	808
What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.		809
What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.		810
A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.		811
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.		812
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.		813
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.		814
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.		815
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.	Men	816
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.		817
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?		818
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.		819
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.		820
Art raises its head where creeds relax.		821
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.		822
What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.		823
Plato was a bore.		824
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?	Wisdom	825
Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.		826
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.		901
It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.		902
There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.		903
There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.		904
Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.		905
Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.		906
Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.		907
The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.		908

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