Friedrich Nietzsche

I live in my own place - have never copied anyone even half, and at any master who lacks the grace - to laugh at himself - I laugh.

It is however a disgrace to pray! Not for all, but for you, and me, and whoever has his a conscience.

Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints in the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil loose around them- but also the swine.

The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any "God," or any "sinner," or any "Saviour" that "free will" and the "moral order of the world" are lies : serious reflection, the profound self conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it.

School has no task more important than to teach strict thought, cautious judgment, and logical conclusions, hence it must pay no attention to what hinders these operations, such as religion, for instance.

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there are none.

A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.

People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous.

"God", "the immortality of the soul", "salvation", "the beyond"-even as a child I had no time for such notions, I do not waste any time upon them-maybe I was never childish enough for that?

The concepts "soul", "spirit" and last of all the concept "immortal soul" were invented in order to despise the body, in order to make it sick - "holy" - in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling disrespect for all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously i.

God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!

It is not the strengths, but the durations of great sentiments that make great men.

I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.

Improvements are invented only by those who can feel that something is not good.

The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.

"State," I call it, where they all drink poison, the good and the wicked; "state," where they all lose themselves, the good and the wicked; "state," where they all call their slow suicide-"life."

Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night.

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

I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created and obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word.

Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell.