Friedrich Nietzsche Philosophical Quotations

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Socrates.- If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason... The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him... Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

What verse is for the poet, dialectical thinking is for the philosopher. He grasps for it in order to get hold of his own enchantment, in order to perpetuate it.

It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.

The philosopher caught in the nets of language.

What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man.

In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sapand seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it--and tries to live off philosophy.

At the very moment when someone is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world believes the opposite.

The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.

This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature.

Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher.

With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153

The Antichrist, Section 7

For men are not equal: thus speaks justice.

The Gay Science, section 108

Christianity is called the religion of pity.

Man is the cruelest animal.

Ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired.

Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation.

Philosophical systems are wholly true for their founders only.

My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.

We come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious indeed; and moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say "thus it shall be!", it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past - they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer.