Friedrich Nietzsche

Bekannte Zitate von Friedrich Nietzsche

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god but who knows my god?

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

The doer alone learneth.

Art is the proper task of life.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

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

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

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

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

Success has always been a great liar.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The lie is a condition of life.

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life their Christianity, for instance.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Woman was God's second mistake.

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.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

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

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

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

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

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.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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