Our list of Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
(2 minutes read)
The Friedrich Nietzsche's quote says that to live is to suffer, and to survive is to find meaning in suffering.
Life is suffering; we must be aware of this.
We cannot accept this statement with pessimism and resignation. But we must create something positive ourselves, find something superior to the suffering that life will give us.
To create something positive to replace suffering, we must be optimistic, rational, and positive. We start by believing in ourselves, in what we do and say.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Work in Progress...
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Work in Progress...
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Work in Progress...
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
Work in Progress...
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Work in Progress...
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Work in Progress...
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Work in Progress...
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.
Work in Progress...
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
Work in Progress...
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Work in Progress...
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Work in Progress...
It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.
Work in Progress...
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
Work in Progress...
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
Work in Progress...
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Work in Progress...
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
Work in Progress...
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
Work in Progress...
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
Work in Progress...
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Work in Progress...
Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
Work in Progress...
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
Work in Progress...
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Work in Progress...
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
Work in Progress...
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
Work in Progress...
Fear is the mother of morality.
Work in Progress...
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Work in Progress...
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Work in Progress...
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Work in Progress...
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
Work in Progress...
Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.
Work in Progress...
Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
Work in Progress...
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
Work in Progress...
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
Work in Progress...
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Work in Progress...
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Work in Progress...
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Work in Progress...
We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
Work in Progress...
When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.
Work in Progress...
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
Work in Progress...
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Work in Progress...
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
Work in Progress...
The doer alone learneth.
Work in Progress...
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
Work in Progress...
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Work in Progress...
Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
Work in Progress...
Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.
Work in Progress...
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.
Work in Progress...
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
Work in Progress...
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
Work in Progress...
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
Work in Progress...
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.
Work in Progress...
The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!
Work in Progress...
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
Work in Progress...
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
Work in Progress...
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.
Work in Progress...
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
Work in Progress...
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
Work in Progress...
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
Work in Progress...
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
Work in Progress...
The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.
Work in Progress...
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
Work in Progress...
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
Work in Progress...
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.
Work in Progress...
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Work in Progress...
Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
Work in Progress...
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
Work in Progress...
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
Work in Progress...
Love is not consolation. It is light.
Work in Progress...
Success has always been a great liar.
Work in Progress...
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
Work in Progress...
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
Work in Progress...
The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'
Work in Progress...
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
Work in Progress...
Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.
Work in Progress...
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
Work in Progress...
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
Work in Progress...
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
Work in Progress...
What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.
Work in Progress...
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
Work in Progress...
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
Work in Progress...
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
Work in Progress...
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
Work in Progress...
Art is the proper task of life.
Work in Progress...
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
Work in Progress...
There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
Work in Progress...
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
Work in Progress...
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
Work in Progress...
There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Work in Progress...
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
Work in Progress...
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
Work in Progress...
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
Work in Progress...
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
Work in Progress...
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
Work in Progress...
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.
Work in Progress...
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
Work in Progress...
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
Work in Progress...
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.
Work in Progress...
It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.
Work in Progress...
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
Work in Progress...
The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.
Work in Progress...
We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.
Work in Progress...
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Work in Progress...
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
Work in Progress...
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
Work in Progress...
I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman without a single drop of bad blood - certainly not German blood.
Work in Progress...
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
Work in Progress...
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
Work in Progress...
The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
Work in Progress...
Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
Work in Progress...
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
Work in Progress...
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
Work in Progress...
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Work in Progress...
Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.
Work in Progress...
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
Work in Progress...
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Work in Progress...
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'
Work in Progress...
People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.
Work in Progress...
What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.
Work in Progress...
What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.
Work in Progress...
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
Work in Progress...
What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.
Work in Progress...
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
Work in Progress...
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
Work in Progress...
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
Work in Progress...
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
Work in Progress...
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
Work in Progress...
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
Work in Progress...
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
Work in Progress...
Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.
Work in Progress...
Woman was God's second mistake.
Work in Progress...
Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
Work in Progress...
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
Work in Progress...
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.
Work in Progress...
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
Work in Progress...
The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.
Work in Progress...
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
Work in Progress...
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Work in Progress...
I love those who do not know how to live for today.
Work in Progress...
Plato was a bore.
Work in Progress...
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
Work in Progress...
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
Work in Progress...
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Work in Progress...
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
Work in Progress...
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
Work in Progress...
The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.
Work in Progress...
We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.
Work in Progress...
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
Work in Progress...
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
Work in Progress...
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
Work in Progress...
Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.
Work in Progress...
When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.
Work in Progress...
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
Work in Progress...
It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.
Work in Progress...
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
Work in Progress...
The lie is a condition of life.
Work in Progress...
I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
Work in Progress...
There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.
Work in Progress...
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.
Work in Progress...
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.
Work in Progress...
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
Work in Progress...
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
Work in Progress...
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.
Work in Progress...
Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.
Work in Progress...
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
Work in Progress...
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
Work in Progress...
In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.
Work in Progress...
There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.
Work in Progress...
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
Work in Progress...
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
Work in Progress...
Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
Work in Progress...
There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
Work in Progress...
He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
Work in Progress...
There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.
Work in Progress...
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Work in Progress...
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
Work in Progress...
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
Work in Progress...
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
Work in Progress...
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Work in Progress...
What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?
Work in Progress...
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.
Work in Progress...
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.
Work in Progress...
A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
Work in Progress...
It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
Work in Progress...
Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.
Work in Progress...
Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.
Work in Progress...
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
Work in Progress...
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
Work in Progress...
The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
Work in Progress...
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
Work in Progress...
Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.
Work in Progress...
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Work in Progress...
Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
Work in Progress...
In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.
Work in Progress...
Idleness is the parent of psychology.
Work in Progress...
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
Work in Progress...
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.
Work in Progress...
Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?
Work in Progress...
Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
Work in Progress...
What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!
Work in Progress...
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.
Work in Progress...
To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.
Work in Progress...
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
Work in Progress...
When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.
Work in Progress...
Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.
Work in Progress...
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.
Work in Progress...
There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.
Work in Progress...
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
Work in Progress...
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
Work in Progress...
When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.
Work in Progress...
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.
Work in Progress...
Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.
Work in Progress...
This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.
Work in Progress...
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
Work in Progress...
There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.
Work in Progress...
Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.
Work in Progress...
