BY SOFO ARCHON
Here are 81 hand-picked quotes from one my most-loved philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, on topics such as love, morality, truth, god, religion, power, and happiness.
“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.”
“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”
“The more one seeks to rise into height and light, the more vigorously do ones roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep — into evil.”
“Man… cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”
“The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
“It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions.”
“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”
“Become who you are.”
“Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.”
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
“Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman.”
“What is the seal of liberation? — No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.”
“Only those who keep changing remain akin to me.”
“I tell you: one must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.”
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
“I would only believe in a God that knows how to dance.”
“Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.”
“We belong to a time in which culture is in danger of being destroyed by the means of culture.”
“The flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines: so too the wise man.”
“Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.”
“Whatever has its price has little value.”
“Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?”
“Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.”
“In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.”
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
“Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written with his own blood.”
“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, 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.”
“The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding — in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.”
“‘Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”
“The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.”
“No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever feels different goes willingly into the madhouse.”
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book.”
“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
“Art is the proper task of life.”
“What labels me, negates me.”
“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”
“Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.”
“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”
“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
“There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.”
“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.”
“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.”
“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
“Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen. Few in pursuit of the goal.”
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”
“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.”
“What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.”
“Man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”
“I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers.”
“As long as you still experience the stars as something “above you”, you lack the eye of knowledge.’
“One must not let oneself be misled: they say ‘Judge not!’ but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.”
“There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world’s religions.”
“Life is that which must overcome itself again and again.”
“I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday.”
“Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology.”
“What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives acts and experiences otherwise than we do?”
“A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.”
“When one has not had a good father, one must create one.”
“We ought to face our destiny with courage.”
“Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard.”
“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.”
“We labor at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”
“One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.”