Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a great German philosopher, born in 1844. But he was much more than that, he was also a composer, a poet, a philologist, a cultural critic, and he was even a Latin and Greek scholar.
He began his career as a classical philologist and he was the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, and he was only 24 years old. But with time he turned to philosophy.
Unfortunately most of his life he had severe health problems and at the age of 44, he suffered from a complete loss of mental functions. That was in 1889, and he died eleven years later in 1900.
In his philosophical work, he spoke of many topics, like history, art, philology, religion, culture, tragedy, and science. His great inspiration was Arthur Schopenhauer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Richard Wagner. He was fiercely and radically criticizing the truth in favor of perspectivism, he spoke about nihilism, he criticized religion and Christian morality, and he spoke about the will to power. Some of his later works spoke about the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural and moral contexts in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health.
His work later influenced many other philosophers and it had a great influence on modern intellectual history. He is today much appreciated in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism.
We are going to share with you some of the best quotes from Nietzsche and some inspirational parts from his outstanding books.
- “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.”
- “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
- “Blessed are forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
- “One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”
- “The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.”
- “When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.”
- “I obviously do everything to be “hard to understand” myself”
- “If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.”
- “The real world is much smaller than the imaginary”
- “Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.”
- “Art is the proper task of life.” ”
- “One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.”
- “The final reward of the dead – to die no more”
- “A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.”
- “Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad.”
- “Your educators can only be your liberators.”
- “The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”
- “My genius is in my nostrils.”
- “Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.” ”
- “Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology. ”
- A man who wills command something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.”
- “The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned.”
- “Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.”
- “And life confided the secret to me: behold, it said, l am that which must always overcome itself.”
- “I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.” ”
- “The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.” ”
- “Was that life?’ I want to say to death. ‘Well then! Once more!”
- “And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching — what doth that prove! It is more, verily, when out of one’s own burning cometh one’s own teaching!”
- “Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture doth it increases its own knowledge,–did ye know that before?”
- “We have to be careful that in throwing out the devil, we don’t throw out the best part of ourselves.”
- “All history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things.”
- “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
- “As soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position and consequently my arguments! You have to be the victim of the same passion!”
- “We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.”
- “Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”
- “Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.”
- “A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.”
- “In every real man, a child is hidden that wants to play.” ”
- “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. ”
Source: pinterest.com - “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”
- “Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier and simpler.”
- “The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
- “He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
- “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
- “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
- “If you know why, you can live anyhow.”
- “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
- “What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.”
- “The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.”
- “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. ”
Which quote was your favorite?
I hope you liked the selection of quotes we made for you, and that you are now more inspired. Maybe you also got an inspiration to read some of Nietzsche’s great works.
