Friedrich Nietzsche
In morality, man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum.Collection: Men
Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.Collection: Book
Certitude drives people mad.Collection: People
Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And don't forget about your legs either! Lift up your legs as well, you good dancers, and better yet--stand also on your heads!Collection: Dance
Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes.Collection: Law
if a person wishes to achieve peace of mind and happiness then they should acquire faith, but if they want to be a disciple of truth, which can be "frightening and ugly,” then they need to search.Collection: Mind
[Heraclitus] did not require humans or their sort of knowledge, since everything into which one may inquire he despises [as being] in contrast [to his own] inward-turning wisdom. [To him] all learning from others is a sign of nonwisdom, because the wise man focuses his vision on his own intelligence.Collection: Wise
We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?Collection: Lying
Respectability offends my taste.Collection: Taste
If we make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause, as martyrs do for the sake of our church : it is a sacrifice to our longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power.Collection: Sacrifice
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.Collection: Mother
What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.Collection: Suffering
[Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.Collection: Pride
There is more wisdom in your body than in your best wisdom. And who then knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom?Collection: Wisdom
The beast in us must be[78] wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces.Collection: May
The drive toward knowledge has a moral origin.Collection: Truth
We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed.Collection: Tone
In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societiesCollection: Wind
Just as a waterfall grows slower and more lightly suspended as it plunges down, so the great man of action tends to act with greater calmness than his tempestuous desires prior to the deed would lead one to expect.Collection: Men
Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.Collection: Quality
Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself).Collection: Lying
We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.Collection: Guilt
It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.Collection: Suffering
Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.Collection: Fate
One should not go into churches if one wants to breathe pure air.Collection: Air
The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existedCollection: Religious
All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its god to be truthful and understandable in his communications.Collection: Communication
It is neither the best nor the worst things in a book that defy translation.Collection: Book
Man is something to be surpassed.Collection: Men
He who bears injustice alone is terrible to behold.Collection: Pain
The job of rearing a child consists of making conscious activities unconscious.Collection: Jobs
Most of the time in married life is taken up by talk.Collection: Marriage
Human, all too human.Collection: Chaos
When anyone apologizes to us he has to do it very expertly: otherwise we might easily come to see ourselves as the guilty party and experience unpleasant feelings.Collection: Party
The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.Collection: People
The value of a man can only be measured with regard to other men.Collection: Self Worth
Such a man as instinctively feeds on pure ambrosia and leaves alone the indigestible in things.Collection: Men
Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward.Collection: Pain
The ability to suffer is a small matter - weak women and even slaves can acheive virtuosity in that.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: School
We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have passed it on.Collection: Knowledge
It is no doubt possible to fly--but first you must know how to dance like an angel.Collection: Angel
Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.Collection: Science
One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.Collection: Pain
In true love it is the soul that envelops the body.Collection: Love
For it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.Collection: World
Lying very still and thinking very little is the most inexpensive medicine for all the sicknesses of the soul, and when administered with good intentions it grows more and more pleasant with each passing hour.Collection: Lying
Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and most modern serpents.Collection: Knowledge
It is our taste that decides against Christianity now, no longer our reasons.Collection: Taste