Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

Detesto seguir alguém assim como detesto conduzir. Obedecer? Não! E governar, nunca! Quem não se mete medo não consegue metê-lo a ninguém, E só aquele que o inspira pode comandar. Já detesto guiar-me a mim próprio! Gosto, como os animais das florestas e dos mares, De me perder durante um grande pedaço, Acocorar-me a sonhar num deserto encantador, E forçar-me a regressar de longe aos meus penates, Atrair-me a mim próprio... para mim.

Dante, or the hyena that writes poetry in tombs.

The great problems are to be encountered in the street.

If someone wants to seem to be something, stubbornly and for a long time, he eventually finds it hard to be anything else. The profession of almost every man, even the artist, begins with hypocrisy, as he imitates from the outside, copies what is effective.

These trumpeters of reality are bad musicians.

Error has turned animals into men; might truth be capable of turning man into an animal again?

Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't empty space breathing at us?

love of truth is something fearsome and mighty.

For while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that stood fast of the earth—the belief in substance, in matter, in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth.

The race is corrupted—not by its vices, but by its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not recognised exhaustion as exhaustion: physiological misunderstandings are the cause of all evil. Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.

If the poet is not a real genius, I do not know what a genius is.

We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.

Napoleon in his classical manner at one time declared: 'I have the right to answer any complaint against me with an eternal "this is what I am."' [He] stands aloof from the whole world and accepts conditions from no one.

Amo os que não procuram por detrás das estrelas uma razão para morrer e oferecer-se em sacrifício, mas se sacrificam pela terra, para que a terra pertença um dia ao Super-homem.

It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.

When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do they exclaim angrily, "May the whole world perish!" This repulsive emotion is the pinnacle of envy, whose implication is "If I cannot have something, no one can have anything, no one is to be anything!

To die proudly when it is not possible to live proudly anymore. Death, chosen of one's own free will, death at the the right time, with brightness and cheer, done in the midst of children and witnesses, so that it is still really possible to take one's leave, when the one taking leave IS STILL THERE, with a real assessment of what one has achieved and willed, a Summation of life — all the opposite of the pitiful and appalling comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.

They cast injustice and filth at the solitary one: but, my brother, if you would be a star, you must shine for them none the less on that account!

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much and, as it were, from an excess of possibilities does not get around to action. Not reflection, no—true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man.

The labyrinthine man never seeks the truth but always and only his Ariadne.

Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what their ways bring: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals.

Man verdirbt einen Jüngling am sichersten, wenn man ihn anleitet, den Gleichdenkenden höher zu achten, als den Andersdenkenden.

The disappointed man speaks.—I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal.