Quotes
75 Enlightening Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes For Truth Seekers
He wrote on good, evil and the meaning of existence, exerting enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. Friedrich Nietzsche’s brilliant yet brief career was always honest with the purest of intentions in every form.
Born in Prussia in 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer and philologist. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. Aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems that continued to occur throughout the remainder of his life.
The next decade was spent on much of his writings which spanned philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. In his later work, Nietzsche was consumed in the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and health. This series of works covered a wider range of topics including art, philosophy, history, religion, tragedy, culture and science.
Nietzsche died in 1900 in the German Empire from a stroke amid other complications. His ideas continued to have profound impact on 20th and early 21st century thinkers across philosophy as well as the leaders in the areas of art, literature, psychology, politics and popular culture.
Always true to himself, Nietzsche’s body of work touched a wide range of people who managed to seek the truth without realising it was what they needed their whole lives. His influence lives on through the academics who continue to refer to his material for the greater good of future generations.
1. That which does not kill us makes us stronger
Friedrich Nietzsche
2. You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
3. The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Friedrich Nietzsche
4. “It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
Friedrich Nietzsche
5. If you know the why, you can live any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
6. All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
Friedrich Nietzsche
7. And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche
8. It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Friedrich Nietzsche
9. He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
Friedrich Nietzsche
10. In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche
11. Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal.
Friedrich Nietzsche
12. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche
13. To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Friedrich Nietzsche
14. One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.
Friedrich Nietzsche
15. When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
Friedrich Nietzsche
16. In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.
Friedrich Nietzsche
17. We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
Friedrich Nietzsche
18. One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
19. A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
Friedrich Nietzsche
20. There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche
21. Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
Friedrich Nietzsche
22. Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
Friedrich Nietzsche
23. Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.
Friedrich Nietzsche
24. Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
25. Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
26. The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
Friedrich Nietzsche
27. A thought comes when it will, not when I will.
Friedrich Nietzsche
28. The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
Friedrich Nietzsche
29. Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.
Friedrich Nietzsche
30. Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.
Friedrich Nietzsche
31. Art is the proper task of life.
Friedrich Nietzsche
32. A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
33. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.
Friedrich Nietzsche
34. I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
Friedrich Nietzsche
35. There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
Friedrich Nietzsche
36. There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
37. One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
Friedrich Nietzsche
38. What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives acts and experiences otherwise than we do?
Friedrich Nietzsche
39. No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
Friedrich Nietzsche
40. What does your conscience say? — ‘You should become the person you are’.
Friedrich Nietzsche
41. How little it takes to make us happy! The sound of a bagpipe. Without music life would be a mistake. The German even imagines God as singing songs.
Friedrich Nietzsche
42. What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.
Friedrich Nietzsche
43. And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Friedrich Nietzsche
44. Love brings to light a lover’s noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.
Friedrich Nietzsche
45. You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
Friedrich Nietzsche
46. Life is that which must overcome itself again and again.
Friedrich Nietzsche
47. The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.
Friedrich Nietzsche
48. The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
Friedrich Nietzsche
49. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences; what others say in a whole book.
Friedrich Nietzsche
50. A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche
51. In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
Friedrich Nietzsche
52. That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.
Friedrich Nietzsche
53. I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
Friedrich Nietzsche
54. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.
Friedrich Nietzsche
55. There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
Friedrich Nietzsche
56. A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.
Friedrich Nietzsche
57. Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
Friedrich Nietzsche
58. 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.
Friedrich Nietzsche
59. A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
Friedrich Nietzsche
60. Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche
61. People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.
Friedrich Nietzsche
62. Do you want to have an easy life? Then always stay with the herd and lose yourself in the herd.
Friedrich Nietzsche
63. I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
64. To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche
65. Underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
66. The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Friedrich Nietzsche
67. Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
Friedrich Nietzsche
68. Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier and simpler.
Friedrich Nietzsche
69. Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
70. Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
71. There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
72. Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.
Friedrich Nietzsche
73. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
74. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
75. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
