Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

In a dream–in the last dream of the morning, I stood in the foothills today–beyond the world, held scales, and weighed the world.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Where are we headed? Are we not endlessly plunging —backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there an up and a down anymore? Do we not wander as if through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn't it grown colder?

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.

In a real man there is a child hidden: it wants to play. Up then, you women, and discover the child in man!

Man Is Something That Must Be Overcome

Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will—that the values of décadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names. 7. Christianity is called the religion of pity.—Pity stands in

Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says 'All for me' is a horror to us.

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.

He wants to be known deep down, abysmally deep down, before he is capable of being loved at all; he dares to let himself be fathomed. He feels that his beloved is fully in his possession only when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for his devilry and hidden insatiability as for his graciousness, patience, and spirituality.

The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.

It is obvious that my head does not stand properly on my shoulders; for it is well known that everyone else knows better than I what I should do and not do: only I, poor rogue, do not know what I should be at. Are we not all like statues with the wrong heads on them? Isn't that so, my dear neighbor? - But no, you, precisely you, are the exception.

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction;

When I picture a perfect reader, I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity, also something supple, cunning, cautious, a born adventurer and discoverer

I do not know how to make a distinction between tears and music

O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all father- and forefather-lands! Your children's land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility — the undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search. In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past.

Love brings the high and concealed characteristics of the lover into the light--what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it easily deceives regarding his normality.

Creation-that is the great redemption from suffering, and life's growing light. But that the creator may be, much suffering is needed and much change. Indeed, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators

You have always wanted to caress every monster.

Man muß noch Kaos in sich haben um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können

If you invest all your energy in economics, world commerce, parliamentarianism, military engagements, power and power politics, -if you take the quantum of intelligence, seriousness, will, and self-overcoming that you embody and expend it all in this one direction, there there won't be any left for the other direction. Culture and the state - let us be honest with ourselves - these are adversaries.

Rather know nothing than half-know many things! Rather be a fool on one's own account than a wise man in the opinion of others!

Pain does not count as an objection to life

Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.