Quotes About Philosophy

God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it, if there were not a friend? The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.

Being human is a complicated gig. So give that ol' dark night of the soul a hug. Howl the eternal yes! [N.B. this is obviously a humorous paraphrase]

The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is to die soon.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

Is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?

Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. 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.

I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.

Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.

Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?

Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified .

Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.

In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea to receive a polluted river without becoming defiled. I bring you the Superman! He is that sea; in him your great contempt can be submerged.

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

Reason in language - oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

Almost everything we call higher culture is based on the spiritualization of cruelty.

There is a point in every philosophy at which the conviction of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, / pulcher et fortissimus. (Translation: The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave.)