Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Quotes

"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day."

"God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight."

"Success has always been a great liar."

"Art is the proper task of life."

"Art raises its head where creeds relax."

"There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena."

"Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow."

"What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!"

"The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material."

"What is wanted -- whether this is admitted or not -- is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members."

"From what you would know and measure, you must take leave, at least for a time. Only after having left town, you see how high its towers rise above the houses ."

"Only sick music makes money today."

"Has a woman who knew she was well-dressed ever caught a cold?"

"''Reason'' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie."

"Vanity is the polite mask of pride."

"Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude."

"The strength required for the vision of the most powerful reality is not only compatible with the most powerful strength for action, for monstrous action, for crime -- it even presupposes it."

"With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care; the first instinct is to abolish these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. . . . The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The "why?" shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause -- a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving."

"Whoever despises himself still esteems the despiser within himself"

"It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable"