The Portable Nietzsche Quotes

“Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. Today you are still suffering from the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, "I am alone!" The time will come when that which seems high to you will no longer be in sight, and that which seems low will be all-too-near; even what seems sublime to you will frighten you like a ghost And you will cry, "All is false!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors—in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all. . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child - let that be your word concerning virtue!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“The true world—unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us?

(Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)

The true world—an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating—an idea which has become useless and superfluous—consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it!

(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato’s embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)

The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.

(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA)”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Nothing avails: every master has but one disciple, and that one becomes unfaithful to him, for he too is destined for mastership.   [408]”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Misunderstanding of the dream. In the ages of crude primeval culture man believed that in dreams he got to know another real world; here is the origin of all metaphysics.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Thereby men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception: what they hate at this stage is basically not the deception but the bad, hostile consequences of certain kinds of deceptions. In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“But the state tells lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies—and whatever it has it has stolen. Everything about it is false;”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Everywhere the voice of those who preach death is heard; and the earth is full of those to whom one must preach death. Or “eternal life”—that is the same to me, if only they pass away quickly. Thus spoke Zarathustra.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Who is more godless than I, that I may delight in his instruction?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Of inference, all are capable; of judgment, only a few.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“To educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write. (VII,”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Corruption. 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.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean. Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea; in him your great contempt can go under.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“beast of burden, then the defiant lion, then creation.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Learning from one's enemies is the best way toward loving them; for it makes us grateful to them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“The barrel of a pistol is for me at the moment a source of relatively agreeable thoughts.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies too; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“all the dear religious people still do not raise such questions even now: rather, they have a thirst for things that are against reason, and they do not want to make it too hard for themselves to satisfy it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche

“Doubtful. To accept a faith just because it is customary, means to be dishonest, to be cowardly, to be lazy. And do dishonesty, cowardice, and laziness then appear as the presupposition of morality?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche