Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, whose critiques of contemporary culture, religion, and philosophy centered on a basic question regarding the foundation of values and morality.

See also: The Antichrist, Beyond Good and Evil, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Sourced

• There are no facts, only interpretations.
  • Notebooks, (Summer 1886 – Fall 1887)

• In Germany there is much complaining about my "eccentricities." But since it is not known where my center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been "eccentric." That I was a philologist, for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had for me — it was the most severe test of my character.
  • Letter to Carl Fuchs (14 December 1887)

• So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
  • Letter to Carl Fuchs (14 December 1887)

• I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr. Förster has not yet severed his connection with the anti-Semitic movement. ... Since then I've had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and protectiveness I've so long felt toward you. The separation between us is thereby decided in really the most absurd way. Have you grasped nothing of the reason why I am in the world? ... Now it has gone so far that I have to defend myself hand and foot against people who confuse me with these anti-Semitic canaille; after my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more recently have given the impetus to this most dire of all confusions. After I read the name Zarathustra in the anti-Semitic Correspondence my forbearance came to an end. I am now in a position of emergency defense against your spouse's Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully my ideal!!
  • Draft for a letter to his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (December 1887)

• You have committed one of the greatest stupidities — for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. ... It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Förster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner, always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them after all. ... It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I have favored secretly — and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times.
  • Objecting to his sister Elisabeth, about her marriage to the anti-semite Bernhard Förster, in a Christmas letter (1887) in Friedrich Nietzsche's Collected Letters, Vol. V, #479

• I have somehow something like "influence" ... In the Anti-Semitic Correspondence ... my name is mentioned in almost every issue. Zarathustra ... has charmed the anti-Semites; there is a special anti-Semitic interpretation of it that made me laugh very much.
  • As quoted in "Idea of Anti-Semitism Filled Nietzsche With Ire and Melancholy" in The New York Times (19 December 1987)

• Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.
  • As quoted in The Puzzle Instinct : The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life‎ (2004) by Marcel Danesi, p. 71 from Human All-Too-Human

• He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
  • "Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism 146 (1886)

• The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
  • The Dawn, Sec. 297

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)

Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn (1873)

Part 1

• Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.
  • Variant translation: In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history" — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
    One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.

• The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.

• Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."
  • Variant translation: The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.

• What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him — even concerning his own body — in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.

• The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.

• Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
  It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.

• The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.' To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.

• We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.

• Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.

• We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

• What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

• We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.

• The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.

• Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries — a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.

• One may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind.

• As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself.

• When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man.

• Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his "self consciousness" would be immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available.

• Between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: I mean, a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue — for which I there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. "Appearance" is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true that the essence of things "appears" in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the hardening and congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing concerning its necessity and exclusive justification.

• If each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound — then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature — which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence.

• We produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way

Part 2

• We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions.

• Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems.

• The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors, and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art.

• Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people — the ancient Greeks, for instance — more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker.

• Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring.

• That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard — of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.

• There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.

• The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption — in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch.

Human, All Too Human (1878)

• Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.
  • Preface 7

• One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.
  • I.59

• Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.
  • I.67

• One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
  • I.74

• Every tradition grows ever more venerable — the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
  • I.96

• Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind.
  • I.475

• He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.
  • I.579

• The advantage of a bad memory is that one can enjoy the same good things for the first time several times.
  • I.580

• No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.
  • I.597

• If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
  • II.1

• The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.
  • II.77

• Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.
  • II.122

• The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
  • II.137

• A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.
  • II.202

• With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception... they are overcome by belief in themselves. It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them.

• In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.

• It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets how to make war. And yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort of the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking that a people needs when it is losing its vitality.

Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)

• He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.
  • 252

• He who lives as children live — who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance — remains childlike.
  • 280

• It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!
  • 330

• For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.
  • 380

• One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance.
  • 537

The Gay Science (1882)

Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882)

• We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows — not even God.
  • Sec. 9

• Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one's power upon others; that is all one desires in such cases. One hurts those whom one wants to feel one's power, for pain is a much more efficient means to that end than pleasure; pain always raises the question about its origin while pleasure is inclined to stop with itself without looking back. We benefit and show benevolence to those who are already dependent on us in some way (which means that they are used to thinking of us as causes); we want to increase their power because in that way we increase ours, or we want to show them how advantageous it is to be in our power; that way they will become more satisfied with their condition and more hostile to and willing to fight against the enemies of our power.
  • Sec. 13

• The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.
  • Sec. 29

• Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession…

• A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
  • Sec. 41

• Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.
  • Sec. 56

• But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
  • Sec. 58

• Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.
  • Sec. 78

• Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.
  • Sec. 92

• Art furnishes us with eyes and hands and above all the good conscience to be able to turn ourselves into such a phenomenon.
  • Sec. 107

• To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
  • Sec. 110

• Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
  • Sec. 116

• Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet. Aph. 125
  • God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him.
  • Sec. 125

• Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow.
  • Sec. 126; variant translation: Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

• The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
  • Sec. 130

• What is now decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our reasons.
  • Sec. 132

• To find everything profound — that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.
  • Sec. 158

• We are always in our own company.
  • Sec. 166

• Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.
  • Sec. 179

• The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
  • Sec. 191

• We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way — not at all or in an interesting manner.
  • Sec. 232

• New Domestic Animals. I want to have my lion and my eagle about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them today, and be afraid of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me, and tremble?
  • Sec. 250

• Die Leugner des Zufalls. — 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.
  • Those who deny chance. — 'No victor believes in chance.'
    • Sec. 258.

• Was sagt dein Gewissen? — 'Du sollst der werden, der du bist.'
  • What does your conscience say? — "You shall become the person you are."
  • Variant translation: Become who you are.
  • It is noted here and here that the phrase was first used by Pindar, and was merely re-used by Nietzsche.
  • Sec. 270.

• What is the seal of liberation? — No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.
  • Sec. 275

• There is something laughable about the sight of authors who enjoy the rustling folds of long and involved sentences: they are trying to cover up their feet.
  • Sec. 282

• For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!
  • Sec. 283; Variant translation: For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously.

• Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.
  • Sec. 284

• Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.
  • Sec. 285

• We want to be poets of our life — first of all in the smallest most everyday matters.
  • Sec. 299

• Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature — nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present — and it was we who gave and bestowed it.
  • Sec. 302

• It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally — and verily, it should not be denied them. They are forces of the greatest importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness.
  • Sec. 318

• Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it — that is great, that belongs to greatness.
  • Sec. 325

• Could one count such dilettantes and old spinsters as that mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainlander, as a genuine German? In the last analysis he probably was a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralize).
  • Sec. 357

• I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.
  • Sec. 381

• We "conserve" nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not by any means "liberal"; we do not work for "progress"; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place sing of the future: their song about "equal rights," "a free society," "no more masters and no servants" has no allure for us.

• We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth (because it would certainly be the realm of the deepest leveling and chinoiserie); we are delighted with all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventures, who refuse to compromise, to be captured, reconciled, and castrated; we count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery — for every strengthening and enhancement of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement.
  • The term chinoiserie indicates "unnecessary complication" and some translations point out that this passage invokes ideas in the concluding poem of Beyond Good and Evil: "nur wer sich wandelt bleibt mit mir verwandt" : Only those who keep changing remain akin to me.

• Is it not clear that with all this we are bound to feel ill at ease in an age that likes to claim the distinction of being the most humane, the mildest, and the most righteous age that the sun has ever seen? It is bad enough that precisely when we hear these beautiful words we have the ugliest suspicions. What we find in them is merely an expression — and a masquerade — of a profound weakening, of weariness, of old age, of declining energies. What can it matter to us what tinsel the sick may use to cover up their weakness? Let them parade it as their virtue; after all, there is no doubt that weakness makes one mild, oh so mild, so righteous, so inoffensive, so "humane"!
  • Sec. 377

• Preparatory human beings. — I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day — the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.

• To this end we now need many preparatory courageous human beings who cannot very well leap out of nothing — any more than out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and metropolitanism: human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities; human beings who are bent on seeking in all things for what in them must be overcome; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; human beings whose judgment concerning all victors and the share of chance in every victory and fame is sharp and free; human beings with their own festivals, their own working days, and their own periods of mourning, accustomed to command with assurance but instantly ready to obey when that is called for, equally proud, equally serving their own cause in both cases; more endangered human beings, more fruitful human beings, happier beings!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Also sprach Zarathustra (In German) [ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext99/spzar10.txt Thus Spake Zarathustra (English translation)]

• Du grosses Gestirn! Was wäre dein Glück, wenn du nicht Die hättest, welchen du leuchtest!
  • You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine?
  • Prologue 1

• Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe.
  • You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
  • Prologue 3

• Wahrlich, ein schmutziger Strom ist der Mensch. Man muß schon ein Meer sein, um einen schmutzigen Strom aufnehmen zu können, ohne unrein zu werden.
  • Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean.
  • Prologue 3

• Ich sage euch: man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können.
  • I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
  • Prologue 5

• Kein Hirt und Eine Heerde! Jeder will das Gleiche, Jeder ist gleich: wer anders fühlt, geht freiwillig in's Irrenhaus.
  • No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever feels different goes wilingly into the madhouse.
  • Prologue 5

• Welches ist der große Drache, den der Geist nicht mehr Herr und Gott heißen mag? "Du-sollst" heißt der große Drache. Aber der Geist des Löwen sagt "ich will". "Du-sollst" liegt ihm am Wege, goldfunkelnd, ein Schuppentier, und auf jeder Schuppe glänzt golden "Du sollst!" Tausendjährige Werte glänzen an diesen Schuppen, und also spricht der mächtigste aller Drachen: "aller Wert der Dinge - der glänzt an mir." "Aller Wert ward schon geschaffen, und aller geschaffene Wert - das bin ich. Wahrlich, es soll kein 'Ich will' mehr geben!" Also spricht der Drache.
  • Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will." "Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt." Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all the dragons: "All value of all things shines on me. All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon.
  • Part I, Chapter 1, "Von den drei Verwandlungen"/"On the Three Metamorphoses"

• Keine geringe Kunst ist schlafen: es thut schon Noth, den ganzen Tag darauf hin zu wachen.
  • It is no small art to sleep: for that purpose you must keep awake all day.
  • Part I, Chapter 2, "Von den Lehrstühlen der Tugend"/"On the Teachers of Virtue"

• "Leib bin ich und Seele"–so redet das Kind. Und warum sollte man nicht wie die Kinder reden?
  • "Body am I, and soul"–so says the child. And why should one not speak like children?
  • Part I, Chapter 4, "Von den Verächtern des Leibes"/"On the despisers of the Body"

• Es ist mehr Vernunft in deinem Leibe, als in deiner besten Weisheit.
  • There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
  • Part I, Chapter 4, "Von den Verächtern des Leibes"/"On the despisers of the Body"

• Und nichts Böses wächst mehr fürderhin aus dir, es sei denn das Böse, das aus dem Kampfe deiner Tugenden wächst. Mein Bruder, wenn du Glück hast, so hast du Eine Tugend und nicht mehr: so gehst du leichter über die Brücke.
  • And nothing evil grows in you any longer, unless it is the evil that grows out of the conflict of your virtues. My brother, if you are fortunate, then you will have only one virtue and no more: thus you will go more easily over the bridge.
  • Part I, Chapter 5, "Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften"/"On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions"

• Von allem Geschriebenen liebe ich nur Das, was Einer mit seinem Blute schreibt.
  • Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written with his own blood.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Es ist immer etwas Wahnsinn in der Liebe. Es ist aber immer auch etwas Vernunft im Wahnsinn.
  • There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Muthig, unbekümmert, spöttisch, gewaltthätig - so will uns die Weisheit: sie ist ein Weib und liebt immer nur einen Kriegsmann.
  • Brave, unconcerned, mocking, violent–thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman, and loves only a warrior.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Es ist wahr: wir lieben das Leben, nicht, weil wir an's Leben, sondern weil wir an's Lieben gewöhnt sind.
  • It is true: we love life not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Ich würde nur an einen Gott glauben, der zu tanzen verstünde.
  • I would only believe in a God that knows how to dance.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Nicht durch Zorn, sondern durch Lachen tödtet man
  • Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Ihr seht nach oben, wenn ihr nach Erhebung verlangt. Und ich sehe hinab, weil ich erhoben bin.
  • You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• Im Gebirge ist der nächste Weg von Gipfel zu Gipfel: aber dazu musst du lange Beine haben. Sprüche sollen Gipfel sein: und Die, zu denen gesprochen wird, Grosse und Hochwüchsige.
  • In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.
  • Part I, Chapter 7, "Vom Lesen und Schreiben"/"On Reading and Writing"

• "Je mehr er hinauf in die Höhe und Helle will, um so stärker streben seine Wurzeln erdwärts, abwärts, in's Dunkle, Tiefe, — in's Böse."
  • The more one seeks to rise into height and light, the more vigorously do ones roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep — into evil.
  • Part I, Chapter 8, "Vom Baum am Berge"/"On the Tree on the Mountain"

• Ihre (Predigern des Todes) Weisheit lautet: "ein Thor, der leben bleibt, aber so sehr sind wir Thoren! Und das eben ist das Thörichtste am Leben!" —
  • Their (the preachers of death) wisdom speaks thus: "Only a fool remains alive, but such fools are we! And that is surely the most foolish thing about life!"
  • Part I, Chapter 9, "Von den Predigern des Todes"/"On the Preachers of Death"

• Ich weiss um den Hass und Neid eures Herzens. Ihr seid nicht gross genug, um Hass und Neid nicht zu kennen. So seid denn gross genug, euch ihrer nicht zu schämen!
  • I know of the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
  • Part I, Chapter 10, "Vom Krieg und Kriegsvolke"/"On War and Warriors"

• Seht sie klettern, diese geschwinden Affen! Sie klettern über einander hinweg und zerren sich also in den Schlamm und die Tiefe. Hin zum Throne wollen sie Alle: ihr Wahnsinn ist es, — als ob das Glück auf dem Throne sässe! Oft sitzt der Schlamm auf dem Thron — und oft auch der Thron auf dem Schlamme. Wahnsinnige sind sie mir Alle und kletternde Affen und Überheisse. Übel riecht mir ihr Götze, das kalte Unthier: übel riechen sie mir alle zusammen, diese Götzendiener.
  • Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
  • Part I, Chapter 11, "Vom neuen Götzen"/"On the New Idol"

• Wenn die Macht gnädig wird und herabkommt ins Sichtbare: Schönheit heiße ich solches Herabkommen. Und von niemandem will ich so als von dir gerade Schönheit, du Gewaltiger: deine Güte sei deine letzte Selbst-Überwältigung.
  • When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible — such descent I call beauty. And there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest.
  • Part II, Chapter 13, "Those Who Are Sublime"

• Zweierlei will der echte Mann: Gefahr und Spiel. Deshalb will er das Weib als das gefährlichste Spielzeug.
  • The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous toy.
  • Chapter 18, Old and Young Women.

• Also aber rathe ich euch, meine Freunde: misstraut Allen, in welchen der Trieb, zu strafen, mächtig ist! Das ist Volk schlechter Art und Abkunft; aus ihren Gesichtern blickt der Henker und der Spürhund. Misstraut allen Denen, die viel von ihrer Gerechtigkeit reden! Wahrlich, ihren Seelen fehlt es nicht nur an Honig. Und wenn sie sich selber 'die Guten und Gerechten' nennen, so vergesst nicht, dass ihnen zum Pharisäer Nichts fehlt als — Macht!
  • But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking. And when they call themselves 'the good and just,' forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but — power! (Thomas Common translation)
  • Variant translation: But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had — power.
  • Ch.29, The Tarantulas (Similar statements are attributed to Goethe, and to Dostoevsky)

• Und wer von uns Dichtern hätte nicht seinen Wein verfälscht? Manch giftiger Mischmasch geschah in unsern Kellern, manches Unbeschreibliche ward da getan.
  • And who among us poets has not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous hodgepodge has been contrived in our cellars; much that is indescribable was accomplished there.
  • Part II, Chapter 39, On Poets

• Ach, es gibt so viel Dinge zwischen Himmel und Erde, von denen sich nur die Dichter etwas haben träumen lassen. Und zumal ü b e r dem Himmel: denn alle Götter sind Dichter-Gleichnis, Dichter-Erschleichnis! Wahrlich, immer zieht es uns hinan - nämlich zum Reich der Wolken: auf diese setzen wir unsre bunten Bälge und heißen sie dann Götter und Übermenschen: - Sind sie doch gerade leicht genug für diese Stühle! - alle diese Götter und Übermenschen. Ach, wie bin ich all des Unzulänglichen müde, das durchaus Ereignis sein soll! Ach, wie bin ich der Dichter müde!
  • Alas, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed. And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications. Verily, it always lifts us higher — specifically, to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs — all these gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event! Ah, how weary I am of poets!
  • Part II, Chapter 39, On Poets

• Höheres als alle Versöhnung muss der Wille wollen, welcher der Wille zur Macht ist.
  • Higher than all reconciliation must the Will will, which the will to power is.
  • Part II, Chapter 42: Redemption

• Und wer unter Menschen nicht verschmachten will, muß lernen, aus allen Gläsern zu trinken; und wer unter Menschen rein bleiben will, muß verstehn, sich auch mit schmutzigem Wasser zu waschen. Und also sprach ich oft mir zum Troste: "Wohlan! Wohlauf! Altes Herz! Ein Unglück mißriet dir: genieße dies als dein - Glück!"
  • And whoever does not want to die of thirst among men must learn to drink out of all cups; and whoever would stay clean among men must know how to wash even with dirty water. And thus I often comforted myself, "Well then, old heart! One misfortune failed you; enjoy this as your good fortune."
  • Part II, Chapter 43, On Human Prudence

• Die stillsten Worte sind es, welche den Sturm bringen. Gedanken, die mit Taubenfüßen kommen, lenken die Welt.
  • It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.
  • Part II, Chapter 44, The Stillest Hour

• Woher kommen die höchsten Berge? so fragte ich einst. Da lernte ich, daß sie aus dem Meere kommen. Dies Zeugnis ist in ihr Gestein geschrieben und in die Wände ihrer Gipfel. Aus dem Tiefsten muß das Höchste zu seiner Höhe kommen.
  • Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.
  • Part III, Chapter 45, The Wanderer

• O meine Brüder, ich weihe und weise euch zu einem neuen Adel: ihr sollt mir Zeuger und Züchter werden und Säemänner der Zukunft, - wahrlich, nicht zu einem Adel, den ihr kaufen könntet gleich den Krämern und mit Krämer-Golde: denn wenig Wert hat alles, was seinen Preis hat. Nicht, woher ihr kommt, mache euch fürderhin eure Ehre, sondern wohin ihr geht! Euer Wille und euer Fuß, der über euch selber hinaus will, — das mache eure neue Ehre!
  • O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future — verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has its price has little value. Not whence you came shall henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will to go over and beyond yourselves — that shall constitute your new honor.
  • Part III, Chapter 56, On Old and New Tablets(12)

• O meine Brüder, nicht zurück soll euer Adel schauen, sondern h i n a u s ! Vertriebene sollt ihr sein aus allen Vater- und Urväterländern! Eurer Kinder Land sollt ihr lieben: diese Liebe sei euer neuer Adel, — das unentdeckte, im fernsten Meere! Nach ihm heiße ich eure Segel suchen und suchen! An euren Kindern sollt ihr gut machen, daß ihr eurer Väter Kinder seid: alles Vergangene sollt ihr so erlösen! Diese neue Tafel stelle ich über euch!
  • 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. This new tablet I place over you.
  • Part III, Chapter 56, On Old and New Tablets(12)

• Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?
  • Part I, On the Way of the Creator

• Then will he who goes under bless himself for being one who goes over and beyond; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at high noon for him.

"Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to live" — on that great noon, let this be our last will.

• • Part I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue, 3

On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Also translated as Genealogy of Morals

• There still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank. They designate themselves simply by their superiority in power (as "the powerful," "the masters," "the commanders") or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as "the rich," "the possessors" (this is the meaning of 'Arya,' and of corresponding words in Iranian and Slavic).
  • Essay 1, Section 5

• As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in the world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.
  • Essay 1, Section 7

• While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed.
  • Essay 1, Section 10

• Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the longest and most ancient part of human history teaches — and in punishment there is so much that is festive!
  • Essay 2, Section 6

• That every will must consider every other will its equal — would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.
  • Essay 2, Section 11

• It is possible to imagine a society flushed with such a sense of power that it could afford to let its offenders go unpunished.
  • Essay 2, Section 11

• The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."
  • Essay 2, Section 15

• All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward — this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his "soul."
  • Essay 2, Section 16

• The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far, was therefore accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on earth.
  • Essay 2, Section 21

• The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.
  • Essay 3, Aphorism 14

• A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.
  • Essay 3, Aphorism 16

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Götzen-Dämmerung (1888)

• Plato ist langweilig
  • Plato is boring.
    • What I Owe to the Ancients, 2

• What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?
  • Maxims and Arrows, 7

• Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
  • What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
    • Maxims and Arrows, 8

• Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow.
  • Maxims and Arrows, 27

• Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrtum.
  • Without music, life would be a mistake.
    • Maxims and Arrows, 33

• Das Christenthum ist eine Metaphysik des Henkers...
  • Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman...
    • The Four Great Errors, Section 7

• Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
  • What the Germans lack, 2; also in The Antichrist, Sec. 60, and Gay Science, Sec. 147

• 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. I give an example. 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 [genüsslich] — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization ...
  • Variant translation: Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man, 38

• It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book.
  • Things the Germans Lack, 51

• The doctrine of equality! … But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice … "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" — that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".
  • Die Lehre von der Gleichheit! ... Aber es giebt gar kein giftigeres Gift: denn sie scheint von der Gerechtigkeit selbst gepredigt, während sie das Ende der Gerechtigkeit ist... "Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches - das wäre die wahre Rede der Gerechtigkeit: und, was daraus folgt, Ungleiches niemals gleich machen."
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man, §48 Progress in my sense (Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen §48 Fortschritt in meinem Sinne). Chapter title also translated as: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, Kaufmann/Hollingdale translation, and Raids of an Untimely Man, Richard Polt translation

• When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallowpates.
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man §5

• We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt.
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man §26.
  • Wofür wir Worte haben, darüber sind wir auch schon hinaus. In allem Reden liegt ein Gran Verachtung.
  • Variant translation: That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.'

• These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself.

• Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. —

• How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which must be overcome, by the effort [Mühe] it costs to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and dreadful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves — most beautiful type: Julius Caesar — ; this is true politically too; one need only go through history. The nations which were worth something, became worth something, never became so under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit — and forces us to be strong ...

• First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong. — Those large hothouses [Treibhäuser] for the strong, for the strongest kind of human being that has ever been, the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand the word freedom: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers ...

The Antichrist (1888)

Der Antichrist (1888); The Antichrist (English translation at WIkisource) (German) ; for more quotes from this work see The Antichrist

• Einige werden posthum geboren.
  • Some are born posthumously.
    • Foreword.

• What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
  • Sec. 2

• In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
  • Sec. 16

• Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
  • Sec. 23

• ...to the priestly class -- decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of "good" and "bad," "true" and "false" in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.
  • Sec. 24

• The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding — in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
  • This has commonly been paraphrased: The last Christian died on the cross.
  • Sec. 39

• As an artistic triumph in psychological corruption ... the Gospels, in fact, stand alone ... Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal "holiness" unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art — all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is race.
  • Sec. 44

• The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish.
  • Sec. 44

• What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose early Christians for companions as Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them — neither has a pleasant smell.
  • Sec. 46

• The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who "reduced to absurdity" "the wisdom of this world" (especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an indication of Paul's resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own will the name of God, Torah — that is essentially Jewish.
  • Sec. 47'

• God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment — but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake.
  • Sec. 48

• Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.
  • Sec. 48

• That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
  • Sec. 51; Often paraphrased as: "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

• "Faith" means not wanting to know what is true.
  • Sec. 52

• Nihilist und Christ: das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloss.
  • Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme, and do not merely rhyme...
  • Sec. 58, as translated by R. J. Hollingdale. In German these words do rhyme; variant translation: Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme, and they do indeed do more than just rhyme.

• Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I do not say by what sort of feet—) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin—because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust—a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile."[...] Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not.... “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.
  • Sec. 60

• I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.
  • Sec. 62

Ecce Homo (1888)

"Ecce Homo" (Behold the Man) indicates the phrase Pontius Pilate used in presenting Jesus to the crowd after his scourging.

• Der Mensch der Erkenntniss muss nicht nur seine Feinde lieben, er muss auch seine Freunde hassen können.
  • The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
  • Foreword

• Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

• One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.

• I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.
  • "Why I am a Destiny", 1

• was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker
  • What does not kill him, makes him stronger.
  • "Why I Am So Wise", 2; this is often paraphrased as: What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

• All things considered, I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music. For I seemed condemned to the society of Germans. If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take to hashish. Well, I had to take to Wagner...
  • Why I am So Clever, 6. Trans. Clifton P. Fadiman.

• To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is.
  • Why I am So Clever, 9

The Will to Power (1888)

Der Wille zur Macht (1888) has been called a "historic forgery" artificially assembled by Nietzsche's sister" who was a well known Nazi sympathizer. It was published after Nietzsche's death and portions with seemingly racist and nationalist overtones have been attributed to his sister's beliefs, not Nietzsche's. See also "Thus Spake Elisabeth" in The Weekly Standard (13 March 2004).

• This is the antinomy: Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence.
  • Sec. 6

• Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time — in the form of legislation, religions, and customs.
  • Sec. 144

• A man as he ought to be: that sounds to us as insipid as "a tree as it ought to be."
  • Sec. 332

• To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures.
  • Sec 481

• The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence — here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for "laws."
  • Sec. 630

• Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions ... I abhore Christianity with a deadly hatred.
  • Sec. 685

• The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life...three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty — all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
  • Sec. 801

• The Beautiful exists just as little as the True. In every case it is a question of the conditions of preservation of a certain type of man: thus the herd-man will experience the value feeling of the True in different things than will the Overman.
  • Sec. 804

• A declaration of war on the masses by Higher Men is needed! ... Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the end of the People or the Feminine, works in favor of Universal Suffrage, i.e. the domination of the Inferior Men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair to light and the bar of judgment.
  • Sec. 864

• The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.
  • Sec. 872

• The homogenizing of European man ... requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a Master Race whose sole task is to rule, but a Race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength ... strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.
  • Sec. 898

• There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of "aristocrats of the spirit," reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite term among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood.
  • Sec. 942

• The possibility has been established for the production of...a Master Race, the future "masters of the earth"...made to endure for millennia — a higher kind of men who...employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth.
  • Sec. 960

Disputed

• Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.
  • As quoted by Charles de Lint in The Little Country (1991), but no earlier sources yet found.

• I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood.

Unsourced

• Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.
  • From a letter to his sister.

• The future influences the present just as much as the past.

• Every word is a prejudice. (The Wanderer and his Shadow, sec. 55)

• The greatest events are not our loudest hours, but rather our most quiet.

• Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. (Beyond Good and Evil)

• A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

• At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

• For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.

• I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

• In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
  • From the Nachlaß, KSA 13: 11[153]
  • Original context: Die Kirche hat deutsche Kaiser auf Grund ihrer Laster in Bann getan: als ob ein Mönch oder Priester über das mitreden dürfte, was ein Friedrich der Zweite von sich fordern darf. Ein Don Juan wird in die Hölle geschickt: das ist sehr naiv. Hat man bemerkt, daß im Himmel alle interessanten Menschen fehlen?
  • Translated: The Church has excommunicated German emperors because of their vices: As if a monk or a priest had a say in what someone like Friedrich II [the Staufer, 1194-1250] may demand of himself. A Don Juan is sent to hell: that is very naïve. Is it noticed that in Heaven all the interesting people are missing?

• After the old god has been assassinated, I am ready to rule the world.

• Swallow your poison, for you need it badly.

• Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the best of even their blunders.

• What is bad? But I have said this already: all that comes of weakness, of envy, of revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same origin.

• We have art in order not to die of the truth.

• Your pride can't hurt me — I have no beliefs!

• No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

• He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

• People demand freedom only when they have no power.

• He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

• Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule.

• Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

• The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.

• To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

Quotes about Nietzsche

• The degree of introspection achieved by Nietzsche had never been achieved by anyone, nor is it ever likely to be achieved again.
  • Sigmund Freud, in remarks (28 October 1908), as reported in Freud, Adler, and Jung (1980) by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, p. 265
  • Variant: Freud several times said of Nietzsche that he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live.
    • As reported in Freud, Adler, and Jung (1980) by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, p. 266 (part of this statement has sometimes been taken as a direct quote of Freud, rather than a summation of what he said).