Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

 
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

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.


The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

We are always in our own company.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
 
For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.