Friedrich Nietzsche

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.

But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?

Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.

You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm.

The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

Denn was ist Freiheit? Dasz man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat.

On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection - most dreams are bungled - the are symbolic chains of scene and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or expectations or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed when we remember our dreams.

What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. The way men usually are, it takes a name to make something visible for them.

The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.

When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.