Friedrich Nietzsche

“Freier Wille ohne Fatum ist ebenso wenig denkbar, wie Geist ohne Reelles, Gutes ohne Böses.”

“Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

“May I really say it! All truths are bloody truths to me—take a look at my previous writings.”

“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.”

“Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.”

“So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.”

“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.”

“Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without “taste,” at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost. Philosophical thinking, on the other hand, is ever on the scent of those things which are most worth knowing, the great and the important insights.”

“Diesen Ernsthaften diene zur Belehrung, dass ich von der Kunst als der höchsten Aufgabe und der eigentlich metaphysischen Thätigkeit dieses Lebens im Sinne des Mannes überzeugt bin, dem ich hier, als meinem erhabenen Vorkämpfer auf dieser Bahn, diese Schrift gewidmet haben will.”

“Wie nun der Philosoph zur Wirklichkeit des Daseins, so verhält sich der künstlerisch erregbare Mensch zur Wirklichkeit des Traumes; er sieht genau und gern zu: denn aus diesen Bildern deutet er sich das Leben, an diesen Vorgängen übt er sich für das Leben.”

“Der philosophische Mensch hat sogar das Vorgefühl, dass auch unter dieser Wirklichkeit, in der wir leben und sind, eine zweite ganz andre verborgen liege...”

“Darum hat Lessing, der ehrlichste theoretische Mensch, es auszusprechen gewagt, dass ihm mehr am Suchen der Wahrheit als an ihr selbst gelegen sei...”

“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.”

“He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.”

“Merchant and pirate...for a long period are one and the same person...Even to-day mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement on piratical morality.”

“A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

“On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full import of this simile.”

“Christianity has succeeded in transforming Eros and Aphrodite—great powers capable of idealisation—into diabolical kobolds and phantoms.”

“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.”

“Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt. — Und wir — Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.”

“To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.”

“Morality is herd instinct in the individual.”

“Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet.”

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.”

“Glaubt es mir! – das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heißt: gefährlich leben!”

“I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?”

“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.”

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.”

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

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