Click a title to read more text. From Homer's Contest: When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: "natural" qualities and those called truly "human" are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work. From The Birth of Tragedy: We talk so abstractly about poetry, because we are all bad poets.
—§8 From On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense: What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions—they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins. From Untimely Meditations: Human beings who do not want to belong to the mass need only to stop, and not be comfortable; follow their conscience, which cries out: "Be yourself! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you yourself."...your educators can be only your liberators...
—Schopenhauer as Educator, §1 Each of the three types of existing history is only exactly right for a distinct soil and climate: on every other one it grows up into a ruinous weed. If a man who wants to create greatness uses the past, he seizes upon it for himself by means of monumental history; in contrast, one who is habituated by tradition and custom insists on cultivating the past as an antiquarian historian; and only one whose breast is oppressed by a present need and who wants to cast off his load at any price has a need for critical history, i.e., history which tries and passes judgment. Many a harm stems from the thoughtless transplanting of plants: the critical man without need, the antiquarian without piety, and the connoisseur of greatness without the ability for greatness are the sort who are susceptible to weeds, alienated from natural mother earth and thus degenerate growths.
—On the Use and Disadvantage of History, §2 From Human, All Too Human: ...life has not been devised by morality: it wants deception, it lives on deception—
—Preface, §1 Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
—§483 When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.
—§529 Out of passions grow opinions; mental sloth lets these rigidify into convictions.
—§637 From Mixed Opinions and Maxims: Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
—§122 The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
—§137 ...will a self and thou shalt become a self...
—§366 From The Wanderer and His Shadow: Every word is a prejudice.
—§55 Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal. A parable.
—§204 During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent act of stupidity.
—§206 The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.
—§278 We should not let ourselves be burnt by our opinions: we are not that sure of them. But perhaps for this: that we may have and change our opinions.
—§333 From The Dawn: To accept a faith just because it is customary, means to be dishonest, to be cowardly, to be lazy. And do dishonesty, cowardice, and laziness then appear as the presupposition of morality?
—§101 A strange thing, our punishment! It does not cleanse the criminal, it is no atonement; on the contrary, it pollutes worse than the crime does.
—§236 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.
—§297 From The Gay Science: Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not letting us see her reasons?
—Preface, §4 ...the great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience.
—§2 We can destroy only as creators.
—§58 Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
—§116 But during the longest period of the human past nothing was more terrible than to feel that one stood by oneself. To be alone, to experience things by oneself, neither to obey nor to rule, to be an individual—that was not a pleasure but a punishment; one was sentenced to "individuality."
—§117 God is dead.
—§108 God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
—§125 Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.
—§173 I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
—§276 For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!
—§283 ...but we want to be the poets of our life—first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters.
—§299 But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. —But what if this should become more and more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie—if God himself should prove to be our most enduring lie?—
—§344 The more mistrust, the more philosophy.
—§346 ...one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence.
—§347 ...A "scientific" interpretation of the world, as you understand it, might therefore still be one of the most stupid of all possible interpretations of the world, meaning that it would be one of the poorest in meaning...an essentially mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world...
—§373 From Thus Spoke Zarathustra: I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him...The overman is the meaning of the earth...Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated? Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this lightning, he is this frenzy.
—Prologue, §3 Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end...Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud; but this lightning is called overman.
—Prologue, §4 I say unto you: One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.
—Prologue, §5 Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit...True, we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness...I would believe only in a god who could dance...
—Pt. I, On Reading and Writing You may have only enemies whom you can hate, not enemies you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the successes of your enemy are your successes too.
—Pt. I, On War and Warriors Whatever the state saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing, sanguinary, insatiate monster.
—Pt. I, On the New Idol A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power...Verily, men gave themselves all their good and evil. Verily, they did not take it, they did not find it, nor did it come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself—he alone created a meaning for things, a human meaning. Therefore he calls himself "man," which means: the esteemer. To esteem is to create: hear this, you creators! Esteeming itself is of all esteemed things the most estimable treasure. Through esteeming alone is there value: and without esteeming, the nut of existence would be hollow...Change of values—there is a change of creators. Whoever must be a creator always annihilates...
—Pt. I, On the Thousand and One Goals Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude...
—Pt. I, On the Way of the Creator Then I said: "Woman, give me your little truth." And thus spoke the little old woman: "You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!"
—Pt. I, On Little Old and Young Women Many die too late and a few die too early. The doctrine still sounds strange: "Die at the right time!"...I want to die myself that you, my friends, may love the earth more for my sake; and to earth I want to return that I may find rest in her who gave birth to me. Verily, Zarathustra had a goal; he threw his ball: now you, my friends, are the heirs of my goal; to you I throw my golden ball. More than anything, I like to see you, my friends, throwing the golden ball. And so I still linger a little on the earth: forgive me for that...
—Pt. I, On Free Death Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.
—Pt. I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue, 2 One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?...You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers—but what matter all believers? You had not yet sought yourselves: and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little. Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you...
—Pt. I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue, 3 I am a north wind to ripe figs.
—Pt. II, Upon the Blessed Isles Beggars should be abolished entirely! Verily it is annoying to give to them, and it is annoying not to give to them.
—Pt. II, On the Pitying For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms...
—Pt. II, On the Tarantulas He who cannot obey himself is commanded...The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death...And life itself confided this secret to me: "Behold," it said, "I am that which must always overcome itself."...Indeed, the truth was not hit by him who shot at it with the word of the "will to existence": that will does not exist. For, what does not exist cannot will; but what is in existence, how could that still want existence? Only where there is life is there also will: not will to life but—thus I teach you—will to power... And whoever must be a creator in good and evil, verily, he must first be an annihilator and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but this is creative."
—Pt. II, On Self-Overcoming Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
—Pt. II, On those Who Are Sublime It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.
—Pt. II, The Stillest Hour O heaven over me, pure and high! That is what your purity is to me now, that there is no eternal spider or spider web of reason; that you are to me a dance floor for divine accidents, that you are to me a divine table for divine dice and dice players.
—Pt. III, Before Sunrise "This is my way; where is yours?"—thus I answered those who asked me "the way." For the way—that does not exist.
—Pt. III, On the Spirit of Gravity, 2 ...what is good and evil no one knows yet, unless it be he who creates. He, however, creates man's goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future. That anything at all is good and evil—that is his creation.
—Pt. III, On Old and New Tablets, 2 For creators are hard...This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: become hard!
—Pt. III, On Old and New Tablets, 29 It is not enough for me that lightning no longer does any harm. I do not wish to conduct it away: it shall learn to work for me. My wisdom has long gathered like a cloud; it is becoming stiller and darker. Thus does every wisdom that is yet to give birth to lightning bolts. For these men of today I do not wish to be light, or to be called light. These I wish to blind. Lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!
—Pt. IV, On the Higher Man, 7 Shy, ashamed, awkward, like a tiger whose leap has failed: thus I have often seen you slink aside, you higher men. A throw had failed you. But, you dice-throwers, what does it matter? You have not learned to gamble and jest as one must gamble and jest. Do we not always sit at a big jesting-and-gaming table? And if something great has failed you, does it follow that you yourselves are failures? And if you yourselves are failures, does it follow that man is a failure? But if man is a failure—well then!
—Pt. IV, On the Higher Man, 12 This crown of him who laughs, this rose-wreath crown: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown. Laughter I have pronounced holy; you higher men, learn to laugh!
—Pt. IV, On the Higher Man, 20 O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—
From the deep dream I woke and swear:
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe;
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity."
—Pt. IV, The Drunken Song 12 From Beyond Good and Evil: Supposing truth is a woman—what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart? What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to be won—and today every kind of dogmatism is left standing dispirited and discouraged. If it is left standing at all! For there are scoffers who claim that it has fallen, that all dogmatism lies on the ground—even more, that all dogmatism is dying.
—Preface To recognize untruth as a condition of life—that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
—§4 Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.
—§13 ...no one lies as much as the indignant do.
—§26 Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.
—§40 Whoever is a teacher through and through takes all things seriously only in relation to his students—even himself.
—§63 Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.
—§78 There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena—
—§108 Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
—§146 Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.
—§153 Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
—§156 Wisdom—seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and a trick for getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosopher—as it seems to us, my friends?—lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life—he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game—
—§205 Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
—§227 Every enhancement of the type "man" has so far been the work of an aristocratic society...
—§257 There are master morality and slave morality...even in the same human being, within a single soul. The moral discrimination of values has originated either among a ruling group whose consciousness of its difference from the ruled group was accompanied by delight—or among the ruled, the slaves and dependents of every degree.
—§260 The noble soul has reverence for itself.
—§287 From On the Genealogy of Morals: ...the source of the concept "good" has been sought and established in the wrong place: the judgment "good" did not originate with those to whom "goodness" was shown! Rather it was "the good" themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good...It was out of this pathos of distance that they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for values...the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a "below"—that is the origin of the antithesis "good" and "bad."
—"Good and Evil," "Good and Bad," §2 The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed.
—"Good and Evil," "Good and Bad," §10 To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect—more, it is nothing other than precisely this very driving, willing, effecting, and only owing to the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that petrified in it) which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a "subject," can it appear otherwise. For just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such substratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.
—"Good and Evil," "Good and Bad," §13 Apart from the ascetic ideal, man—the animal, man—had no meaning hitherto. His existence on earth had no goal. "Why have man at all?" was a question without an answer...the ascetic ideal offered mankind meaning...that hatred against everything human, even more, against everything animal, everything material, this disgust with the senses, with reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get away from all semblance, change, becoming, death, wish, desire itself—the meaning of all this, should we dare to comprehend it, is a will to nothingness, a will running counter to life, a revolt against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; yet it is and remains a will! And, to repeat...rather than want nothing, man even wants nothingness.
—What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?, §28 From The Case of Wagner: Only sick music makes money today.
—§5 From Twilight of the Idols: To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both—a philosopher.
—Maxims and Arrows, 3 Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
—Maxims and Arrows, 7 Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
—Maxims and Arrows, 8 He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
—Maxims and Arrows, 12 What? You search? You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? Seek zeros!
—Maxims and Arrows, 14 I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
—Maxims and Arrows, 26 Without music life would be a mistake.
—Maxims and Arrows, 33 ...The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
—Maxims and Arrows, 34 I searched for great men but found only the apes of their ideals.
—Maxims and Arrows, 39 My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.
—Maxims and Arrows, 44 The concept of "God" was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsibility in God: only thereby do we redeem the world.
—The Four Great Errors, 7 Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena—more precisely, a misinterpretation.
—The "Improvers" of Mankind, 1 What the German spirit might be—who has not had his melancholy ideas about that! But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two greatest European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.
—What the Germans Lack, 2 To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there...
—Skirmishes of An Untimely Man, 36 Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole—he does not negate anymore. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.
—Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, 49 ...it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book.
—Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, 51 Plato was a bore.
—What I Owe to the Ancients, 2 From The Antichrist: ...Some men are born posthumously.
—Preface The conditions under which I am understood, and then of necessity—I know them only too well. One must be honest in matters of the spirit to the point of hardness before one can even endure my seriousness and my passion. One must be skilled in living on mountains—seeing the wretched ephemeral babble of politics and national self-seeking beneath oneself. One must have become indifferent; one must never ask if the truth is useful or if it may prove our undoing. The predilection of strength for questions for which no one today has the courage; the courage for the forbidden...a new conscience for truths that have so far remained mute...Reverence for oneself; love of oneself; unconditional freedom before oneself...
—Preface Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.
—§1 Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
—§44 What, does it mean, after all to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart, that one despises "beautiful sentiments," that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience. Faith makes blessed: consequently it lies.
—§50 A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
—§51 "Faith" means not wanting to know what is true.
—§52 From Ecce Homo: My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.
—Why I Am So Wise, 8 I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: it is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers—at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!
—Why I Am So Clever, 1 Early in the morning, when day breaks, when all is fresh, in the dawn of one's strength—to read a book at such a time is simply depraved!
—Why I Am So Clever, 8 My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.
—Why I Am So Clever, 10 The time for me hasn't come yet: some are born posthumously.
—Why I Write Such Good Books, 1 I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.—
—Why I Am a Destiny, 1 Have I been understood?— Dionysus versus the Crucified.—
—Why I Am a Destiny, 9 From Nietzsche's Notebooks: For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible ...
—Summer-Fall 1873 29 [54] To educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write.
—Spring-Summer 1875 5 [25] To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.
—Spring-Summer 1875 5 [178] All truths are for me soaked in blood.
—Summer 1880 4 [271] My strongest characteristic is self-overcoming. But I also need it most.
—November 1882-February 1883 4 [13] There are many kinds of eyes. Even the sphinx has eyes—and consequently there are many kinds of "truths," and consequently there is no truth.
—April-June 1885 34 [230] This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!
—June-July 1885 38 [12] Against positivism, which halts at phenomena [and says] "there are only facts," I would say: no, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations.
—Summer 1886-Fall 1887 7 [60] What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; "why?" finds no answer.
—Fall 1887 9 [35] The will to a system: in a philosopher, morally speaking, a subtle corruption, a disease of the character; amorally speaking, his will to appear more stupid than he is—more stupid, that is to say: stronger, simpler, more imperious, more uneducated, more commanding, more tyrannical ...
—Fall 1887 9 [188] I am not bigoted enough for a system—and not even for my system.
—Fall 1887 10 [146] In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
—November 1887-March 1888 11 [153] What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.
—Spring 1888 14 [159] To prove a conviction is quite senseless; rather, it is important to prove that one has a right to be so convinced ... Conviction is an objection, a question mark, a défi ["challenge"] (—very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions—? Rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions! ! !
—Spring 1888 14 [159] We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
—Spring-Summer 1888 16 [40] | 
Posts
