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Nietzsche Quotes

Browse 157 quotes about Nietzsche.

Nietzsche Quotes

“No greater affirmation of life is possible than to wish every part of it to return to you forever. It is the sublime moment when a person can look at his life, no matter what it consists of – good, bad, or indifferent – and find within himself the desire never to be freed from any aspect of it that allows a human being to be transformed into an Übermensch, the supreme life affirmer.”

AffirmationNietzscheSupermanUbermenschEternal RecurrenceSisyphean
Author:Michael Faust
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“Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was.* Anyone who reads the Night Song and the Dance Song in Zarathustra will recognize that they spring out the same emotion as the Vedic or Gathic hymns or the Psalms of David. The idea of the Superman is a response to the need for salvation in precisely the same way that Buddhism was a response to the 'three signs'.”

AtheismBuddhismNietzscheZarathustraUbermensch
Book:The Outsider
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“The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe exists--and that one has to pay them back with sacrifices and accomplishments; one thus recognizes a debt that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength.”

ReligionHistoryLegacyAncestorsNietzsche
Book:On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo
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“Nietzsche asked in 1882: 'What is the point of all the art of our works of art if we lose that higher art, the art of festivals?' The brief moment of intoxication lures us off the via dolorosa. Such spectacles also asserted the underlying continuity of European society since the Renaissance, despite steam engine, trainm and telegraph. Such was the confidence in the homology between the present day and a supposedly integrated and self-assured sixteenth century that people were still willing, in donning costumes, to turn themselves into living works of art. (This was the bourgeois response to the fantasy of the socialist Fourier, who thought people could become living artworks if they disrobed.) The contrast between the costumes and the black-and-white everyday garb of 1879, a way of dressing as if designed to be photographed, was sharp. Fourteen thousand citizens took part in Makart's extravaganza, 300,000 more looked on.”

ArtCostumesNietzscheViennaFestivalFourierMakartRingstrasse
Book:A History of Art History
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“The Ignavi were damned because they couldn’t choose any side other than their own. Even worse, perhaps, is the person who chooses a side that isn’t his own just to please someone he likes, just to generally 'signal his virtue'. Nietzsche despised virtue signalers and humble braggers. He thought they had no virtue at all and were actually self-serving narcissists trying to get their own way. He provocatively referred to himself as the first immoralist, but, really, he believed that all moralists were the true immoralists since their morality was never anything other than disguised and highly polished self-interest. There was nothing moral about it.”

MoralityNietzscheIgnaviVirtue Signalling
Book:Without the Mob, There Is No Circus
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“It’s about Nietzsche’s theory of universal debt. Your parents make it possible for you to believe a far better myth than Santa. They let you think that you, as a kid, don’t owe the world a thing. The world can give you, even if just for a few minutes, utter joy without requiring anything from you. It’s not about consumerism. As far as you know, no one buys you these presents. They come out of nothingness, with fantasies of elves attached. You aren’t required to be grateful to your parents or anything like that. They can give to you and nothing is required in return. When you get old enough, when you have kids, you get to enact this myth for them. It has nothing to do with any fat man in a red suit, no matter what we tell ourselves. It’s about owing nothing, and then realizing that you have to do this job of perpetuating this… this fantasy world, whether you like it or not.”

FantasyChristmasParenthoodSanta ClausOwingNietzscheUniversal Debt
Book:Flies to Wanton Boys
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“It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as such, attempts to philosophize.”

MoralityNietzscheBeyond Good And EvilWill To TruthPrejudices Of PhilosophersImpulses Of Man
Book:Beyond Good and Evil
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“A parallel comparison helps to capture the similarities between existentialism (especially Nietzsche's) and Daoism (especially Zhuangzi's). Both discover the practical pointlessness of universal or absolute meaning (purpose). Nietzsche, from his perspective as a disappointed Christian yearning for absolute, transcendent, dependence on God, experiences this awareness with existentialist angst, a sensation of looking off a cliff into a bottomless abyss. The angst is caused by the vertigo impulse, the fear we will jump or drop off our perch into that nothingness. Zhuangzi, from his Daoist sense of the constraint of conventional authority, does not think of any cliff as a reference point. If the abyss is bottomless, then there is no such thing as falling. The cliff and Zhuangzi are both floating free. Leaving the cliff and entering the abyss is weightlessness―free flight―not falling. From his relativistic perspective, the cliff is floating away. Zhuangzi's reaction is not "Oh no!" but "Whee!”

PhilosophyNihilismNietzscheZhuangzi
Book:A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation
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“In his treatise on the battles between the gods underlying ancient Dionysian theatre, the young Nietzsche notes: 'Alas! The magic of these struggles is such, that he who sees them must also take part in them.' Similarly, an anthropology of the practising life is infected by its subject. Dealing with practices, asceticisms and exercises, whether or not they are declared as such, the theorist inevitably encounters his own inner constitution, beyond affirmation and denial.”

NietzscheAsceticismPractising
Book:Du mußt dein Leben ändern
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“Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the ‘God is dead’ phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual) is never to be confused with its acquired purpose: ‘Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose.’ This is a liberating thought, which teaches us to never hold the history of something against its possible applications. Even if computers started out as calculators, that doesn’t prevent us from playing games on them. (47) (quoting Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals)”

TransformationNietzscheRepurposingAlturism
Book:The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
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“O socialismo é o fantasioso irmão mais jovem do quase decrépito despotismo, do qual quer herdar; suas aspirações são, portanto, no sentido mais profundo, reacionárias. Pois ele deseja uma plenitude de poder estatal como só a teve alguma vez o despotismo, e até mesmo supera todo o passado por aspirar ao aniquilamento formal do indivíduo: o qual lhe aparece como um injustificado luxo da natureza e deve ser transformado e melhorado por ele em um órgão da comunidade adequado a seus fins.”

NietzscheSocialismo
Author:Nietzsche Friedrichlevy Oscarkennedy J M
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“More precisely, it is a question of dissolving contradictions in the fires of love and desire and of demolishing the walls of death. Magic rites, primitive or naïve civilizations, alchemy, the language of flowers, fire, or sleepless nights, are so many miraculous stages on the way to unity and the philosophers’ stone. If surrealism did not change the world, it furnished it with a few strange myths which partly justified Nietzsche’s announcement of the return of the Greeks. Only partly, because he was referring to unenlightened Greece, the Greece of mysteries and dark gods. Finally, just as Nietzsche’s experience culminated in the acceptance of the light of day, surrealist experience culminates in the exaltation of the darkness of night, the agonized and obstinate cult of the tempest. Breton, according to his own statements, understood that, despite everything, life was a gift. But his compliance could never shed the full light of day, the light that all of us need.”

GreekSurrealismNietzscheAndré BretonDark Greek
Book:The Rebel
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“There is no reason to believe that political agency must solely be located in the modern state, and Nietzsche does not hold such a view. He instead locates his political project in the transition away from the nation-state. Indeed, the decay of the state signals the superseding of the modern question of political philosophy as framed by Leiter: the theory of the state and its legitimacy. The new question for Nietzsche will revolve around determining which institutions can fullfill the Platonic mission of producing the new Platos that the culture-state failed to achieve.”

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Book:Nietzsche's Great Politics
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“Kim Olduysan O Ol” İlk “granit cümle” olan “Kim olduysan o ol” (Become who you are) düşüncesi, Aristoteles’e kadar uzanır ve oradan Spinoza, Leibnitz, Goethe, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Karen Horney, Abraham Maslow ve 1960’lardaki insan potansiyeli hareketi aracılığıyla günümüzdeki kendini gerçekleştirme (self-realization) anlayışına kadar aktarılmıştır. “Kim olduysan o ol” düşüncesi, Nietzsche’nin diğer ifadeleri olan “Hayatını tamamla” ve “Doğru zamanda öl” gibi öğütleriyle yakından ilişkilidir. Bu ifadelerin hepsinde Nietzsche, yaşanmamış bir hayat sürmekten kaçınmamız gerektiğini vurgular. Demek istediği şuydu: Kendini gerçekleştir, potansiyelini hayata geçir, cesur ve dolu dolu yaşa. Ancak o zaman, ve yalnızca o zaman, pişmanlık duymadan ölebilirsin.”

NietzscheFelsefeYaşamöLümGüneşe BakmakPişmanlıkPotansiyelVaroluşçulukKendini Gerçekleştirme
Author:Irvin Yalom (Author)
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“Z irytacją czytam w celebryckich wywiadach zbanalizowany cytat z Nietzschego: „Co cię nie zabije, to cię wzmocni”. Uważam, że jest wręcz przeciwnie. To dobre doświadczenia dają nam siłę, pewność siebie i optymizm. Cierpienie ogranicza, wywołuje rysy, które wpisują się na twardy dysk naszej osobowości. I gdzieś tam pozostają, mniej lub bardziej ukryte. Gdyby miały wzmacniać, to największymi herosami winni być ludzie po Auschwitz. A nie są…”

NietzscheFilozofiaSlogany
Book:Towarzyszka Panienka
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“Nietzsche felt like Rommel, hiding behind The Cauldron at Gazala – waiting and biding his time while his enemies took their shots, holding his position. The impenetrable defense took down tank after tank until the enemy couldn’t fight any more. Then, a quick attack was mounted and Rommel took Torbuk in a single day. He chased the British to Egypt. That’s where Nietzsche was right now, mounting his offensive, ready to chase both God and the Norse. Oh, how he wanted vengeance on both fronts.”

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Book:Operation Cosmic Teapot
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“Amacım, kimseyi geçmişin pişmanlık denizinde boğmak değil; nihayetinde kişinin bakışını geleceğe çevirmesini sağlamak ve şu potansiyel olarak hayat değiştirici soruyu sormaktır: Şu anda hayatında ne yapabilirsin ki bir yıl ya da beş yıl sonra geriye dönüp baktığında, biriken yeni pişmanlıklarınla ilgili benzer bir üzüntü hissetmeyesin? Başka bir deyişle, pişmanlık biriktirmeden yaşamayı başarabilir misin?" Nietzsche’nin düşünce deneyi, yaşamı tam anlamıyla yaşayamamış olma hissinden kaynaklanan ölüm kaygısıyla baş eden insanlar için terapistin elinde güçlü bir araç sunar. Dorothy, bu duruma dair klinik bir örnek sağlar.”

NietzscheYaşamGelecekPsikolojiGüneşe BakmakPişmanlıkTerapiAnlam ArayışıGeçmiş HatalaröLüm Kaygısı
Author:Irvin Yalom (Author)
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“No desafio de repensar as categorias do gênero fora da metafísica da substância, é mister considerar a relevância da afirmação de Nietzsche, em Genealogia da Moral, de que “não há ‘ser’ por trás do fazer, do realizar e do tornar-se; o ‘fazedor’ é uma mera ficção acrescentada à obra — a obra é tudo”. Numa aplicação que o próprio Nietzsche não teria antecipado ou aprovado, nós afirmaríamos como corolário: não há identidade de gênero por trás das expressões do gênero; essa identidade é performativamente constituída, pelas próprias “expressões” tidas como seus resultados.”

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Author:Judith Butler
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“An important part of Nietzsche's philosophy is thus shaped by this conviction that it is wrong to identify truth with the Symbolic, that truth should be related to the Real. This is precisely why truth can be dangerous to life: the Symbolic is the shelter of life, whereas the Real is its exposure and vulnerability. This is also what places truth in the field of ethics, as is clear in the second of the passages quoted above (where truth is considered not as an epistemological category, but as a matter of courage — "error is not blindness, error is cowardice...")”

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Author:Alenka Zupančič
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“Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: ‘What morality do they (or does he) aim at?’ Accordingly, I do not believe that an ‘impulse to knowledge’ is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious and, as such, attempts to philosophize.”

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Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“As to Orphism, it soon blended with the worship of the god Dionysus, who originated in Thrace, and who was worshipped there in the form of a bull. Dionysus was quickly accepted in seventh-century Greece, because he was exactly what the Greeks needed to complete their pantheon of gods; under the name Bacchus he became the god of wine, and his symbol was sometimes an enormous phallus. Frazer speaks of Thracian rites involving wild dances, thrilling music and tipsy excess, and notes that such goings-on were foreign to the clear rational nature of the Greeks. But the religion still spread like wildfire throughout Greece, especially among women—indicating, perhaps, a revolt against civilisation. It became a religion of orgies; women worked themselves into a frenzy and rushed about the hills, tearing to pieces any living creature they found. Euripides’ play The Bacchae tells how King Pentheus, who opposed the religion of Bacchus, was torn to pieces by a crowd of women, which included his mother and sisters, all in ‘Bacchic frenzy.’ In their ecstasy the worshippers of Bacchus became animals, and behaved like animals, killing living creatures and eating them raw. The profound significance of all this was recognised by the philosopher Nietzsche, who declared himself a disciple of the god Dionysus. He spoke of the ‘blissful ecstasy that rises from the innermost depths of man,’ dissolving his sense of personality: in short, the sexual or magical ecstasy. He saw Dionysus as a fundamental principle of human existence; man’s need to throw off his personality, to burst the dream-bubble that surrounds him and to experience total, ecstatic affirmation of everything. In this sense, Dionysus is fundamentally the god, or patron saint, of magic. The spirit of Dionysus pervades all magic, especially the black magic of the later witch cults, with their orgiastic witch’s sabbaths so like the orgies of Dionysus’s female worshippers, even to the use of goats, the animal sacred to Dionysus. (Is it not also significant that Dionysus is a horned god, like the Christian devil?) The ‘scent of truth’ that made Ouspensky prefer books on magic to the ‘hard facts’ of daily journalism is the scent of Dionysian freedom, man’s sudden absurd glimpse of his godlike potentialities. It is also true that the spirit of Dionysus, pushed to new extremes through frustration and egomania, permeates the work of De Sade. As Philip Vellacot remarks of Dionysus in his introduction to The Bacchae: ‘But, though in the first half of the play there is some room for sympathy with Dionysus, this sympathy steadily diminishes until at the end of the play, his inhuman cruelty inspires nothing but horror.’ But this misses the point about Dionysus—that sympathy is hardly an emotion he would appreciate. He descends like a storm wind, scattering all human emotion.”

NietzscheDionysusThe DevilOrphismThe BacchaeBacchic Frenzy
Book:The Occult
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