Friedrich Nietzsche

In the last analysis even the best man is evil: in the last analysis even the best woman is bad.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

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.

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

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

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Behind all their personal vanity women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

Success has always been a great liar.

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

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance pain torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

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

There are no facts only interpretations.

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss the abyss will gaze back into you.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

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

Fanatics are picturesque mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

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

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

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.

The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian and he died on the Cross.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her, and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

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

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

When you look into an abyss the abyss also looks into you.

Love is blind, friendship closes its eyes.

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?

To live is to suffer to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

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

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep, the truth is that they are not even shallow.

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.

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

There are no moral phenomena at all but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

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

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

There are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths.

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

What does not destroy me makes me stronger.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

Some are made modest by great praise others insolent.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

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 nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false a gift confers no rights.

One has to pay dearly for immortality, one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Ah women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens a primum mobile with an original movement.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way the correct way and the only way it does not exist.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

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."

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

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

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.

Shared joys make a friend not shared sufferings.

Woman was God's second mistake.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss the abyss gazes also into you.

Not when truth is dirty but when it is shallow does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

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

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

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

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.