Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

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.

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

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.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

The lie is a condition of life.

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.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

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.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

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

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

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

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

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.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

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?

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

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

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

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

Woman was God's second mistake.

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

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

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

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

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

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

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

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.

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

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

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

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.

Art is the proper task of life.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

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

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

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

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

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

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

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

The doer alone learneth.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

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.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

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

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

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

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.

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

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

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

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

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

Success has always been a great liar.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

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.

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

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.

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

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

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?

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

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

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

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

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

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

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.

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

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.