1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
page 2
653 Quotes on Love, Friendship, and the Intricacies of Human Relationships

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.

✵ 15. October 1844 – 25. August 1900  •  Other names Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche: 655 quotes831 likes

Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

“Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 23
The Antichrist (1888)

“At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

“Schopenhauer as educator” ("Schopenhauer als Erzieher"), § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 127
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Context: In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. … Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle.

“What is the seal of liberation? — No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sec. 275
The Gay Science (1882)

“No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

Man büßt es theuer, unsterblich zu sein: man stirbt dafür mehrere Male bei Lebzeiten.
5
Ecce Homo (1888)

“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.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Love, too, has to be learned.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: The Gay Science

“He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

“The real world is much smaller than the imaginary”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

II.293, maxim 358 http://books.google.kz/books?id=Nl-vaAdJD3MC&amp;pg=PA293&amp;dq=%22In+the+mountains+of+truth+you+will+never+climb+in+vain%22&amp;hl=en <br class="br">Human, All Too Human (1878)

“Blessed are the forgetful; for they get over their stupidities, too.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Variant: Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
Source: Beyond Good and Evil

“A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 3, Aphorism 16
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

“A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: The Gay Science

“What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe.
It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world’s religions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Variant: There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
Source: Human, All Too Human

“Do you want to go along with others? or go on ahead? or go off on your own?… you must knowyou want andyou want. Fourth question for the conscience.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Source: Twilight of the Idols

“The 'Kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart — not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 34
The Antichrist (1888)

“Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time — in the form of legislation and customs.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Sec. 144 (Notebook N VII 1. April - June 1885, KGW VII, 3.198, KSA 11.478)
The Will to Power (1888)

“I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sec. 381
The Gay Science (1882)

“Shadow in the flame. The flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines: so too the wise man.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 570
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

“Destination and paths. Many people are obstinate about the path once it is taken, few people about the destination.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 494
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

“May I really say it! All truths are bloody truths to me—take a look at my previous writings.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Notebooks (Summer 1880) 4[271]

“Could one count such dilettantes and old spinsters as that mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainländer, as a genuine German? In the last analysis he probably was a Jew”

Friedrich Nietzsche

all Jews become mawkish when they moralize
Sec. 357
The Gay Science (1882)

“New Domestic Animals. I want to have my lion and my eagle about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them today, and be afraid of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me, and tremble?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Gay Science

Sec. 314
The Gay Science (1882)

“Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession…”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Gay Science

The Gay Science (1882), Sec. 14

“My formula for greatness in a human being is … that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.
Not merely bear what is necessary, …but love it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

Source: Ecce Homo, chapter Why I Am So Clever

“The 'kingdom of God' is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come 'in a thousand years”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere...
Sec. 34
The Antichrist (1888)

“I have somehow something like "influence" ... In the Anti-Semitic Correspondence ... my name is mentioned in almost every issue. Zarathustra ... has charmed the anti-Semites; there is a special anti-Semitic interpretation of it that made me laugh very much.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

As quoted in &quot;Idea of Anti-Semitism Filled Nietzsche With Ire and Melancholy&quot; in The New York Times (19 December 1987) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0D91E3EF93AA25751C1A961948260

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sec. 41
The Gay Science (1882)

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”

Friedrich Nietzsche