A Nietzsche Reader Quotes

“No one is accountable for existing at all, or for being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives. The fatality of his nature cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be. He is not the result of a special design, a will, a purpose; he is not the subject of an attempt to attain an 'ideal of man' or an 'ideal of happiness' or an 'ideal of morality'--it is absurd to want to hand over his nature to some purpose or other. We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking...One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole--there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, condemn the whole...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“Altered opinions do not alter a man’s character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgments! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“What makes heroic? – To go to meet simultaneously one’s greatest sorrow and one’s greatest hope.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“I fear that the animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason – as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind?--They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasrue a humanity would never have come into existence--whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the external miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning of creation which cannot be thought away, the solution of the cosmic riddle, the mighty ruler over nature and the despiser of it, the creature which calls its history world history!--Vanitas vanitatum homo.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“Making plans. - To make plans and project designs brings with it many good sensations; and whoever had the strength to be nothing but a forger of plans his whole life long would be a very happy man: but he would occasionally have to make a rest from this activity by carrying out a plan - and then comes the vexation and the sobering up.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“For today the petty people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“The former morality, namely Kant’s, demanded of the individual actions which one desired of all men: that was a very naive thing;”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader

“(133) Night and music. - The ear, the organ of fear, could have evolved as greatly as it has only in the night and twilight of obscure caves and woods [...]: in bright daylight the ear is less necessary. That is how music acquired the character of an art of night and twilight.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader