Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.

Injustice and filth they throw after the lonely one: but, my brother, if you would be a star, you must not shine less for them because of that. And beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves—they hate the lonely one.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp.

Indeed, at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. -

Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war - a war for your opinions. And when your opinion is defeated, our honesty should still cry triumph over that!

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial — as the real artists of life do.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

Man is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, of course, he is the most interesting.

One is punished most for one's virtues.

Water is sufficient...the spirit moves over water.

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

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)

Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, "society", inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people—"base.

Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.

Everything in the world displeases me: but, above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me.

What do you consider the most humane? - To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? - To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.

Are you one who looks on? or lends a hand? - or who looks away, sidles off?...Third question for the conscience.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.