Friedrich Nietzsche Evil Quotations

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?

The empty, the one, the unmoved, the full, satiation, wanting nothing--that would be my evil: in short, dreamless sleep.

We should conserve evil just as we should conserve the forests. It is true that by thinning and clearing the forests the earth grew warmer.

Everything good is the transmutation of something evil: every god has a devil for a father.

Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying--that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire.

A sure way to irritate people and to put evil thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting a long time. This makes them immoral.

This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!

When horror is associated with what is harmful, evil results, when disgust does, badness.

The golden age, when rambunctious spirits were regarded as the source of evil.

Some rule out of a lust for ruling; others, so as not to be ruled:Mto these it is merely the lesser of two evils.

Every living body continuously eliminates feces, it rejects what is not serviceable to the assimilating organism: what man despises, what arouses his disgust, what he calls evil, are excrements.

I could dispense with nothing when I created the superman. His seed still carries all your evil and falsehood, your lies and yourignorance.

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it.

I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.

[Heraclitus] concluded that coming-to-be itself could not be anything evil or unjust.

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

Prejudice of the learned. - The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they know what is good and evil, praise- and blameworthy. But it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better than any other age.

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal.

The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

For our self respect depends upon our ability to make requital, for good or for evil.

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153

There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be good," there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument-though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.

All names of good and evil are images; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.

For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but intervening shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.

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.

If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.

Whatever harm the evil may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.

In laughter all that is evil comes together, but is pronounced holy and absolved by its own bliss.

Narrow souls I cannot abide; There's almost no good or evil inside

And he who must be a creator in good and evil: verily, he must be an annihilator first and demolish values.

What an age experiences as evil is usually an untimely reverberation echoing what was previously experienced as good--the atavismof an older ideal.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

When, however, you have an enemy, then do not requite him good for evil: for that would shame him. Instead, prove that he did some good for you. And rather be angry than put to shame! And when you are cursed, I do not like it that you want to bless. Rather curse a little also! And if you are done a great injustice, then quickly add five small ones. Hideous to behold is he who is obsessed with an injustice.

This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.

Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?

To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.

If you are too weak to give yourselves your own law, then a tyrant shall lay his yoke upon you and say: "Obey! Clench your teeth and obey!" And all good and evil shall be drowned in obedience to him.

The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them, is not something dreadful also.

In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.

Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

What we experience in dreams - assuming that we experience it often - belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it.

What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness.

Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.

One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.

But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must always come once more.

Thinking evil is making evil.

What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.

Anything which is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.

The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.

In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.