Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

Did I seek where the wind bites keenest, learn to live where no one lives, in the desert where only the polar bear lives, unlearn to pray and curse, unlearn man and god, become a ghost flitting across the glaciers?

The Good Person of today is incapable of approaching anything except in a dishonest way–but with innocence, a true blue-eyed virtuously mendacious way. These Good People are ruined: they cannot stand a single truth about Man.

The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: again and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep—all ordered society puts the passions to sleep—and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled men to pit opinion against opinion, model against model.

Our most sacred convictions, those which are permanent in us concerning the highest values, are judgments emanating from our muscles.

I transform myself to fast: my today refutes my yesterday.

of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared such a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? This question is one which ought to be studied

What is heavy? so asks the spirit that would bear much, and then kneels down like the camel, and wants to be well laden.

Many die too late, and some die too early.

One should adopt only those situations in which is in no need of sham virtues, but rather, like the tight-rope dancer on his tight rope, in which one must either fall or stand - or escape

O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in the truth, and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely—il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien—I wager he finds nothing!

Yo necesito compañeros, pero compañeros vivos; no muertos y cadáveres que tenga que llevar a cuestas por donde vaya.

An instinct is weakened when it rationalises itself: for by rationalising itself it weakens itself.

L'ateismo, per me, non è un risultato, e tanto meno un avvenimento - come tale non lo conosco: io lo intendo per istinto. Sono troppo curioso, troppo problematico, troppo tracotante, perché possa piacermi una risposta grossolana. Dio è una risposta grossolana, un'indelicatezza verso noi pensatori - in fondo è solo un grossolano divieto che ci viene fatto: non dovete pensare!

Go your ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!- gloomy ways, verily, on which not a single hope glints any more!

A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves— and who want to go where I want to go.

He tolerates no other enemy than one in whom nothing is to be despised and a great deal is worthy of respect!

When I am all alone, I often, very often, say your name aloud…

He who strays from tradition becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who remains in tradition is its slave. Destruction follows in any case.

Even the worst thing has two good verso-sides.

Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who commandeth great things. To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to command great things.

24. O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple!

If one shifts the center of gravity of life out of life into the "Beyond" – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its center of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct, all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering.

This workshop where ideals are manufactured--it seems to me it stinks of so many lies