Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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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
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Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”

Variant: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

“Convictions are prisons.”

The Birth of Tragedy/Seventy-five Aphorisms/The Anti-Christ

“no one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any”

I.597
Human, All Too Human (1878)
Context: No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.

“Some are born posthumously.”

Einige werden posthum geboren.
Foreword
The Antichrist (1888)
Source: The Anti-Christ

“I am no man, I am dynamite.”

Source: Ecce Homo

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.”

Variant: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”

Sec. 283; Variant translation: For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously.
The Gay Science (1882)
Context: For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

“Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health…”

Variant: Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

“It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions.”

Es ist nicht der Kampf der Meinungen, welcher die Geschichte so gewaltthätig gemacht hat, sondern der Kampf des Glaubens an die Meinungen, das heisst der Ueberzeugungen.
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / excerpt from aphorism 630
Source: Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

“Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”

Variant: The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play
Source: Beyond Good and Evil