Do you want to learn more about one of the most influential thinkers and philosophers of the modern era? If you enjoy pondering existentialism, philosophy, and nihilism, you will like the following selection of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes. And for even more, be sure to have a look at our selections of wise Socrates quotes and thought-provoking philosophy quotes.
Born in 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose writings on morality had a major impact upon generations of thinkers and writers to come. He’s best known for his controversial writings on the destruction of religion and his provocative ideas about the coming of the Superman-like Übermensch.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Some of Nietzsche’s most popular works include Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Twilight of the Idols. Thanks to these writings, he’s often cited to be one of the originators of modern intellectual literature. His impact on Western philosophy and intellectual thinking is felt to this present day.
Here are the most popular Friedrich Nietzsche quotes
Largely known for his and relentless criticism of traditional religion and morality, Nietzsche was part of a group of thinkers that was suspicious against traditional ethics and values. He sought to promote new values that would nurture the renewal and improvement of human life.
Interpreters of his writings consider Nietzsche as an author who embraced nihilism because of his thoughts on the death of God. His works attempt to explore human existence and called for a rethinking of the established views of morality and knowledge.
Through the continued struggle with one’s intellectual and psychological faculties, Nietzsche drew out a plan for becoming an exemplary human being. In line with this thinking, Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that this super-man would have to come about by means of self-realization without the reliance on transcendental ideas such as God.
121 Illuminating Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
If you struggle to find the time to read all of Nietzsche’s philosophical works, it can be quite helpful to have a summary with his most important quotes at hand. In the following collection of philosophical Friedrich Nietzsche quotes, you can find some of his most popular ideas and thoughts.
Critics of Nietzsche argue that all of his ideas taken together are contradictory. For this reason, his critics state that Nietzsche did not put much emphasis on developing a general cosmology congruent with his many thoughts.
Here’s our selection of philosophical Friedrich Nietzsche quotes
1.
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
2.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
3.
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
4.
“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
5.
“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
6.
“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
7.
“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
8.
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
9.
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
10.
“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
11.
“At bottom, every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
12.
“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
13.
“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.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
14.
“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
15.
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Do you want more Friedrich Nietzsche quotes? Keep on reading…
16.
“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
17.
“Become who you are!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
18.
“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
19.
“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
20.
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
21.
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
22.
“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
23.
“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
24.
“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
25.
“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.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
26.
“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
27.
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
28.
“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
29.
“But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
30.
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
These Friedrich Nietzsche quotes are to the point
31.
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
32.
“It is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep – into evil.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
33.
“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
34.
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
35.
“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if one’s very existence were a work of art.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
36.
“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
37.
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
38.
“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. „
Friedrich Nietzsche
39.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
40.
“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
41.
“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage”
Fredrich Nietzsche
42.
“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.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
43.
“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
44.
“Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
45.
“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason, he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
46.
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
47.
“The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
48.
“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
49.
“The voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls”
Friedrich Nietzsche
50.
“Throw roses into the abyss and say: ‘here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
51.
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
52.
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
53.
“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.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
54.
“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
55.
“Once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally. „
Friedrich Nietzsche
56.
“For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
57.
“No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
58.
“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”
Friedrich Neitzsche
59.
“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
60.
“One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche quotes like this are quite empowering
61.
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
62.
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
63.
“Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
64.
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
65
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
66.
“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
67.
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
68.
“There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
69.
“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
70.
“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
71.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
72.
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
73.
“One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. “Good” is no longer good when one’s neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a “common good”! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end, it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
74.
“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
75.
“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
76.
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
77.
“One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
78.
“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
79.
“What is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
80.
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
81.
“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
82.
“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
83.
“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
84.
“Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”
Fredrich Nietzsche
85.
“The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
86.
“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
87.
“Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
88.
“One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
89.
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. „
Friedrich Nietzsche
90.
“Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
91.
“Success has always been a great liar”
Friedrich Nietzsche
92.
“Art is the proper task of life. „
Friedrich Nietzsche
93.
“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
94.
“A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
95.
“Some men are born posthumously.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
96.
“Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon nod off.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
97.
“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating other.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
98.
“One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
99.
“No artist tolerates reality.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
100.
“I fear you close by; I love you far away.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
101.
“Untroubled, scornful, outrageous – that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
102.
“Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t. „
Friedrich Neitzsche
103.
“The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
104.
“They’re so cold, these scholars! May lightning strike their food so that their mouths learn how to eat fire!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
105.
“A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength – life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
106.
“The one necessary thing. A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
107.
“Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
108.
“What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure – as a mere automaton of duty?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
109.
“What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
110.
“Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
111.
“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
112.
“Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
113.
“I am no man, I am dynamite.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
114.
“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
115.
“Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.”
Friedrich Nietzche
116.
“He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
117.
“To recognize untruth as a condition of life – that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
118.
“What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
119.
“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
120.
“I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
121.
“Virtue is under certain circumstances merely an honorable form of stupidity.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
We hope you enjoyed this collection of Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes.
It is up to the reader of Nietzsche’s works to decide whether his views should be discredited because of the existing contradictions or if particular ideas should be considered. His wide-ranging critique of religious faith in particular and philosophical morality, in general, led many to consider him to be one of the major critics of traditional European morality.
What is your favorite quote by Friedrich Nietzsche?
Stay victorious!
