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Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

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Famous Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

“Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes ("God" "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will" -- "unfree will" for that matter), and purely imaginary effects ("sin," "salvation," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary beings ("God," "spirits," "souls"); an imaginary natural science (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings -- for example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash -- , "repentance," "pangs of conscience," "temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary teleology (the "kingdom of God," "the last judgment," "eternal life"). -- This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the later at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on the meaning of "abominable" -- the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (-- the real! --), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality. . . . This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for lying his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a botched reality. . . . The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for decadence...”

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Book:The Anti-Christ
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“Here all great emotions decay: here only little, dry emotions may rattle! Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shops of the spirit? Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit? Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags? – And they also make newspapers from these rags! Have you not heard how the spirit has here become a play with words? It vomits our repulsive verbal swill! – And they also make newspapers from this verbal swill. They pursue one another and do not know where. They inflame one another, and do not know why. They rattle their tins, they jingle their gold. They are cold and seek warmth in distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness in frozen spirits; they are all ill and diseased with public opinion. All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues.”

SpiritVirtueEmotionsLustVice
Book:Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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“In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search.”

PeopleKnowsWayAbleSpiritOrderLeftHappenedOughtSeekingOne WayGrantsWearyVenerationLeft Handed
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Free will appears unfettered, deliberate; it is boundlessly free, wandering, the spirit. But fate is a necessity; unless we believe that world history is a dream-error, the unspeakable sorrows of mankind fantasies, and that we ourselves are but the toys of our fantasies. Fate is the boundless force of opposition against free will. Free will without fate is just as unthinkable as spirit without reality, good without evil. Only antithesis creates the quality.”

WorldBelieveDreamRealitySpiritEvilForceQualityFantasyFateMankindSorrowErrorsWanderOppositionFree WillToysWorld HistoryDeliberateBoundlessUnthinkableUnspeakableAntithesis
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering- do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness- was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”

KnowsMenHas BeensSoulFacesSpiritSufferingGrowthSecretGreatnessDisciplineEndureRuinsGrantedTensionMaskUnhappinessCunningFace To FaceInterpretingProfundityInventivenessEnhancement
Book:Basic Writings of Nietzsche
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“Parasitism is the only practice of the church; with its ideal of anaemia, its holiness, draining all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself.”

WellsSoulRealitySpiritChurchPracticeBloodAtheismIdealsCrossesMarkPositive AtheismRecognitionHolinessConspiracyGraciousnessDrainingHealth BeautyAnaemia
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.”

WisdomSpiritActorsLeftPrideCallingPhilosophicalPhilosopherMonstersModestyMagnificentPlatoSovereigntyGreecePresumption
Book:The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we "really" experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”

WayNeedsLittlesLongSoulEndsMomentsDreamSpiritEconomyHabitExperienceSensitiveBroadsWakingCheerfulOur DreamsDaylight
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a sacred 'Yes.' For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred 'Yes' is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.”

WorldChildrenStillsSpiritGamesLostForgetCreationBrotherNeededSacredConquerInnocenceMy BrotherLionsNew Beginnings
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service. What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart...that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience.”

HeartMeanDoeSoulMatterSpiritStepsGreatnessIntegrityTruth IsConscienceSurrenderHardestSevereOur LoveEvery StepYes And No
Book:The Portable Nietzsche
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“One should not be deceived: great spirits are skeptics ... Strength, FREEDOM which is born of the strength and overstrength of the spirit, proves itself by skepticism. Men of conviction are not worthy of the least consideration in fundamental questions of value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons.”

MenShouldSpiritValuesBornProveFundamentalsPrisonConvictionWorthyConsiderationSkepticismDeceivedSkepticProve ItGreat SpiritNot Worthy
Book:The Portable Nietzsche
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“I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.”

HeartSpiritFree SpiritI Love HimBowelsFree Heart
Book:THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA (Modern Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the World’s Most Influential Philosopher, Revolutionary Thinker and the Author of The Antichrist, The Birth of Tragedy & Beyond Good and Evil
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“What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.”

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Book:THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA (Modern Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the World’s Most Influential Philosopher, Revolutionary Thinker and the Author of The Antichrist, The Birth of Tragedy & Beyond Good and Evil
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“Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.”

StillsSelfEyeSpiritBehindsEarsInstrumentsSenses
Book:THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA (Modern Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the World’s Most Influential Philosopher, Revolutionary Thinker and the Author of The Antichrist, The Birth of Tragedy & Beyond Good and Evil
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“Indeed, at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'.”

IfsFeelsHeartMaySeemsFacesSpiritLyingClearSeaDangerLoversGratitudeNewsExpectationsPhilosopherHearingShipsDawnHorizonDaringFree SpiritAmazementOverflowForebodingGod Is Dead
Book:Nietzsche: The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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