Friedrich Nietzsche: Greatness

Friedrich Nietzsche was German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist. Explore interesting quotes on greatness.
Friedrich Nietzsche: 1310 quotes831 likes

“Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit….
I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Gay Science

Source: The Gay Science

“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

“Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 23
The Antichrist (1888)
Context: Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world.

“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

What the Germans lack, 2; also in The Antichrist, Sec. 60, and Gay Science, Sec. 147
Twilight of the Idols (1888)

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

“One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Success has always been a great liar”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: The Gay Science