Quotes By Friedrich Nietzsche

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.

The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.'

Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

Anything which is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant-not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.

To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.

In the whole of the New Testament there is not one joke, that fact alone would invalidate any book.

God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!

These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?

The Devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore, he keeps so far away from God-the Devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom.

Our writing equipment takes part in forming our thoughts.

The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.

Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms decrease.

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.

Many brief follies-that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.

To have to fight the instincts-that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

The creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred "No" even to duty-for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.

The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.

Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.