Quotes About Philosophy

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity - through him all things fall.

It is the evening that questions thus from within me.

Wohl bin ich ein Wald und eine Nacht dunkler Bäume: doch wer sich vor meinem Dunkel nicht scheut, der findet auch Rosenhänge unter meinen Zypressen.

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'.

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

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.

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

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

i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

And when he invented his hell, that was his heaven on earth.

Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.

Dostoevsky,the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn.

the lie is a condition of life.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

Reality is a flux, an endless becoming that is beyond words and language - all language is metaphor, useful to us but ultimately detached from reality.