Immerse yourself in the profound and thought-provoking words of Friedrich Nietzsche. Explore his most famous quotes on love, friendship, and the intricacies of human relationships. Discover the wisdom and insight that continue to resonate with readers around the world.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose work has had a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy and became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. However, he resigned due to health problems and spent the remainder of his life under the care of his mother and sister. Nietzsche's work spanned various disciplines such as philosophy, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction. His philosophy included a radical critique of truth, a genealogical critique of religion and morality, and an affirmation of life in response to nihilism.
Nietzsche also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and eternal return. After his death, his sister edited his manuscripts to fit her own ideology, associating Nietzsche's work with fascism and Nazism. However, scholars later defended Nietzsche against this interpretation. Despite this controversy, Nietzsche's ideas have had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers in philosophy, art, literature, politics, and popular culture.
“No more fiction for us: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.”
Sec. 624, as translated by Tobias Dantzig in Number, the Language of Science. Fourth edition, New York: Doubleday 1954, p 141. See discussion of this entry for details.
The Will to Power (1888)
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
(A. Ludovici trans.), “David Strauss,” § 1.2
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Maxims
Objecting to his sister Elisabeth, about her marriage to the anti-semite Bernhard Förster, in a Christmas letter (1887) http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/nlett1887.htm in Friedrich Nietzsche's Collected Letters, Vol. V, #479
Context: You have committed one of the greatest stupidities — for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. … It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Förster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner, always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them after all. … It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I have favored secretly — and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times.
which is its criticism, its annihilation even: 'What is truth?..."
Sec. 46
The Antichrist (1888)
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 616
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
Second Essay, Aphorism 14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
“The day's length. If a man has a great deal to put in them, a day will have a hundred pockets.”
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 529
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 496
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Der philosophische Mensch hat sogar das Vorgefühl, dass auch unter dieser Wirklichkeit, in der wir leben und sind, eine zweite ganz andre verborgen liege...
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 23, William Haussmann translation
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Maxims
Wenn man mit Recht vom Faulen sagt, er töte die Zeit, so muß man von einer Periode, welche ihr Heil auf die öffentlichen Meinungen, das heißt auf die privaten Faulheiten setzt, ernstlich besorgen, daß eine solche Zeit wirklich einmal getötet wird: ich meine, daß sie aus der Geschichte der wahrhaften Befreiung des Lebens gestrichen wird. Wie groß muß der Widerwille späterer Geschlechter sein, sich mit der Hinterlassenschaft jener Periode zu befassen, in welcher nicht die lebendigen Menschen, sondern öffentlich meinende Scheinmenschen regierten.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)
“To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is.”
Daß man wird, was man ist, setzt voraus, daß man nicht im entferntesten ahnt, was man ist.
"Why I am So Clever", 9.
Variant translations:
Becoming what you are presupposes that you have not the slightest inkling what you are.
Ecce Homo (1888)
“Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.”
Sec. 285
The Gay Science (1882)
Sec. 60
The Antichrist (1888)
The term chinoiserie indicates "unnecessary complication" and some translations point out that this passage invokes ideas in the concluding poem of Beyond Good and Evil: "nur wer sich wandelt bleibt mit mir verwandt" : Only those who keep changing remain akin to me.
The Gay Science (1882)
I.213
Human, All Too Human (1878)
280
Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)
Variant translation: The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” p. 153
Untimely Meditations (1876)
In diesen Sanct-Johann- und Sanct-Veittänzern erkennen wir die bacchischen Chöre der Griechen wieder, mit ihrer Vorgeschichte in Kleinasien, bis hin zu Babylon und den orgiastischen Sakäen. Es giebt Menschen, die, aus Mangel an Erfahrung oder aus Stumpfsinn, sich von solchen Erscheinungen wie von "Volkskrankheiten", spöttisch oder bedauernd im Gefühl der eigenen Gesundheit abwenden: die Armen ahnen freilich nicht, wie leichenfarbig und gespenstisch eben diese ihre "Gesundheit" sich ausnimmt, wenn an ihnen das glühende Leben dionysischer Schwärmer vorüberbraust.
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 17
Darum hat Lessing, der ehrlichste theoretische Mensch, es auszusprechen gewagt, dass ihm mehr am Suchen der Wahrheit als an ihr selbst gelegen sei...
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 73
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 495
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
The Gay Science (1882)
“Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that”
Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer thut das
Maxims and Arrows, 12
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 43
Essay 3, Aphorism 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Sec. 250
The Gay Science (1882)
Sec. 51; often paraphrased as: "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything".
The Antichrist (1888)
Diese doppelte Selbständigkeit preist man mit Hochgefühl als ›akademische Freiheit‹: ... nur daß hinter beiden Gruppen in bescheidener Entfernung der Staat mit einer gewissen gespannten Aufsehermiene steht, um von Zeit zu Zeit daran zu erinnern, daß er Zweck, Ziel und Inbegriff der sonderbaren Sprech- und Hörprozedur sei.
Anti-Education (1872)
Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
"Why I Am So Wise", 3, as translated in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings (2005) edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, p. 77
Ecce Homo (1888)
Essay 2, Section 16
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Preface, Section 1
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
“Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme, and do not merely rhyme…”
Nihilist und Christ: das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloss.
Sec. 58, as translated by R. J. Hollingdale. In German these words do rhyme; variant translation: Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme, and they do indeed do more than just rhyme.
The Antichrist (1888)
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous)
Mit dem Tode der griechischen Tragödie dagegen entstand eine ungeheure, überall tief empfundene Leere; wie einmal griechische Schiffer zu Zeiten des Tiberius an einem einsamen Eiland den erschütternden Schrei hörten "der grosse Pan ist todt": so klang es jetzt wie ein schmerzlicher Klageton durch die hellenische Welt: "die Tragödie ist todt! Die Poesie selbst ist mit ihr verloren gegangen! Fort, fort mit euch verkümmerten, abgemagerten Epigonen! Fort in den Hades, damit ihr euch dort an den Brosamen der vormaligen Meister einmal satt essen könnt!"
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 54
Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 81
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 609
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
