100 Quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and cultural critic, is renowned for his profound and often controversial ideas that challenged conventional morality and philosophy. His critique of traditional values, expressed in works like "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and "Beyond Good and Evil," anticipated existentialism and postmodern thought.
Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch" (Overman) and his proclamation that "God is dead" signaled a departure from religious and moral certainties, ushering in an era of philosophical exploration into human agency and meaning. His ideas have been interpreted in various ways, contributing to a rich and complex discourse on topics ranging from power and truth to aesthetics and human potential. While Nietzsche's work was met with resistance during his lifetime, his influence on philosophy, literature, and culture has grown over time, making him one of the most studied and debated philosophers of the modern era.
Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
We have art so that we shall not die of reality. (Quote Meaning)
Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you. (Meaning)
Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be. (Quote Meaning)
There's no defense against stupidity. (Meaning)
The real question is: How much truth can I stand? (Quote Meaning)
Every profound spirit needs a mask. (Meaning)
They muddy the water, to make it seem deep. (Quote Meaning)
Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments. (Meaning)
I and me are always too deeply in conversation. (Quote Meaning)
Only he who is man enough will release the woman in woman. (Meaning)
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. (Quote Meaning)
What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon. (Meaning)
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. (Quote Meaning)
Loneliness is one thing, solitude another. (Meaning)
Faith: not wanting to know what is true. (Quote Meaning)
He who obeys, does not listen to himself! (Meaning)
Invisible threads are the strongest ties. (Quote Meaning)
Man makes god in his own image. (Meaning)
Love, too, has to be learned. (Quote Meaning)
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. (Meaning)
Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster. (Quote Meaning)
There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice. (Meaning)
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others. (Quote Meaning)
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy. (Meaning)
A moral system valid for all is basically immoral. (Quote Meaning)
The love of power is the demon of mankind. (Meaning)
No artist tolerates reality. (Quote Meaning)
Fear is the mother of morality. (Meaning)
Success has always been a great liar. (Quote Meaning)
In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain. (Meaning)
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us. (Quote Meaning)
Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life. (Meaning)
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. (Quote Meaning)
Hold a true friend with both your hands. (Meaning)
Without music, life would be a mistake. (Quote Meaning)
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. (Meaning)
Faith is the path of least resistance. (Quote Meaning)
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. (Meaning)
The lie is a condition of life. (Quote Meaning)
My genius is in my nostrils. (Meaning)
Pity makes suffering contagious. (Quote Meaning)
Only sick music makes money today. (Meaning)
The real world is much smaller than the imaginary (Quote Meaning)
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness. (Meaning)
Life without music is no life at all. (Quote Meaning)
He who does not lie does not know what truth is. (Meaning)
I love those who do not know how to live for today. (Quote Meaning)
Idleness is the parent of psychology. (Meaning)
No victor believes in chance. (Quote Meaning)
Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. (Meaning)
What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. (Meaning)
I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all. (Quote Meaning)
My humanity is a constant self-overcoming. (Meaning)
Better know nothing than half-know many things. (Quote Meaning)
The text has disappeared under the interpretation. (Meaning)
Love is more afraid of change than destruction. (Quote Meaning)
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. (Meaning)
We possess art lest we perish of the truth. (Quote Meaning)
I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself (Meaning)
Pitch-black winter nights live in my bones. (Quote Meaning)
A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation. (Meaning)
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul. (Quote Meaning)
Every day I count wasted in which there has been no dancing. (Meaning)
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion. (Quote Meaning)
One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions. (Meaning)
It is the stillest words that bring the storm. (Quote Meaning)
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. (Meaning)
Art raises its head where creeds relax. (Quote Meaning)
The last Christian died on a cross. (Meaning)
Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking. (Quote Meaning)
Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger. (Meaning)
From which stars have we fallen to meet each other here? (Quote Meaning)
Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art. (Meaning)
God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him. (Quote Meaning)
The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist. (Meaning)
One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired. (Quote Meaning)
What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger (Meaning)
The State is the coldest of all cold monsters. (Quote Meaning)
He who humbles himself wants to be exalted. (Meaning)
In music the passions enjoy themselves. (Quote Meaning)
He who seeks intelligence lacks intelligence. (Meaning)
Man is something that is to be surpassed. (Quote Meaning)
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter. (Meaning)
The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. (Quote Meaning)
Every past is worth condemning. (Meaning)
All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity. (Quote Meaning)
A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling. (Meaning)
Every talent must unfold itself in fighting. (Quote Meaning)
When one has not had a good father, one must create one. (Meaning)
Man must become better and more evil. (Quote Meaning)
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance. (Meaning)
I am no man, I am dynamite. (Quote Meaning)
Master-morality and Slave-morality. (Meaning)
Yes, life is a woman! (Quote Meaning)
In true love it is the soul that envelops the body. (Meaning)
The pure soul is a pure lie. (Quote Meaning)
It is the evening that questions thus from within me. (Meaning)
if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how. (Quote Meaning)
Righteousness exalteth a nation. (Meaning)
One does not kill by anger but by laughter. (Quote Meaning)
Remain true to the earth. (Meaning)
Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman. (Quote Meaning)
Only ideas won by walking have any value. (Meaning)
Man is something to be surpassed. (Quote Meaning)
Human, all too human. (Meaning)
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted. (Quote Meaning)
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. (Meaning)
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'. (Quote Meaning)
What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'. (Meaning)
We have art in order not to die of the truth. (Quote Meaning)
Art is the proper task of life. (Meaning)
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. (Quote Meaning)
Man is the cruelest animal. (Meaning)
God is dead. (Quote Meaning)
Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed. (Meaning)
There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
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.
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.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. (Quote Meaning)
I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. (Meaning)
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. (Quote Meaning)
To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. (Meaning)
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.
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.
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.
Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.
Do you want to have an easy life? Then always stay with the herd and lose yourself in the herd.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?
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. (Quote Meaning)
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
There are no facts, only interpretations. (Meaning)
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man. (Quote Meaning)
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. (Meaning)
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. (Quote Meaning)
Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be.
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.
I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
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.
In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.
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.
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality.
We have art so that we shall not die of reality.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Loneliness is one thing, solitude another.
I and me are always too deeply in conversation.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.
Everything matters. Nothing's important.
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
There's no defense against stupidity.
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.
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
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.
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.
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?
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. (Meaning)
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.
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.
You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty.
The real question is: How much truth can I stand?
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.
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. (Quote Meaning)
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. (Meaning)
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule -- and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.)
If you know the why, you can live any how.
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
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.
The purpose of criminal law is to punish the enemies of those in power.
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.
Man is the only animal that must be encouraged to live.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger. (Quote Meaning)
There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.
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.
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.
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.
Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.
In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
Only he who is man enough will release the woman in woman.
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.
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
All things are subject to interpretation (Meaning)
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.
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
In every real man, a child is hidden that wants to play. (Quote Meaning)
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?
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.
Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.
For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are here, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them!
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
He who obeys, does not listen to himself!
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
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.
Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that's who you become most like.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.
What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done.
Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.
Become who you are!
Become who you are. (Meaning)
Who is better, they who promote truth over happiness, or happiness over truth?
Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.
Few are made for independence, it is the privilege of the strong.
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.
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.
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.
Every profound spirit needs a mask.
We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us.
Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further.
One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
"No journey is too great, when one finds what one seeks."
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.
One must need to be strong, otherwise one will never become strong.
You must climb above yourself-up and beyond, until you have even your stars under you.
All things that are truly great are at first thought impossible.
Those who are devoid of purpose will make the void their purpose.
The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
By losing your goal, You have lost your way.
The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill-temper.
The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it - what it costs us
Beware of spitting against the wind!
What we do is never understood, but always merely praised or blamed.
Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.
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.
Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.
Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest
Men should learn to live with the same seriousness with which children play.
Our salvation lies not in knowing, but in creating!
My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.
What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness.
In the end one only experiences oneself.
It is only those who know how to feel that "this is not good" who devise improvements.
To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.
Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.
Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned.
Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone.
When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called "freedom."
The good four. Honest with ourselves and with whatever is friend to us; courageous toward the enemy; generous toward the vanquished; polite-always that is how the four cardinal virtues want us.
Evolution does not make happiness its goal; it aims simply at evolution and nothing else.
― Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
