Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible - hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion.

God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him.

There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!

The finest and healthiest thing about science is, as in the mountains, the brisk air blowing around in it.--The spiritually delicate (such as artists) shun and slander science owing to this air.

Error has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. Pure knowledge could not have been capable of it.

O, what nowadays does science not conceal! How much, at least, it is meant to conceal!

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.

...throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be.

Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

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.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion on us.

The spiritual activity of millennia is deposited in language.