Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, scholar, and writer. His brilliant, unconventional works, often aphoristic or poetical in form, have secured him an immense, if cultish, influence in contemporary intellectual history.
Born in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia, to a clergyman, Nietzsche studied Greek and Latin at Bonn and Leipzig. In 1869, he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel but resigned after nine years of deteriorating bouts of psychosomatic illnesses. He spent the next ten years at resorts in France, Italy, and Switzerland writing and trying to recuperate.
In 1879, Nietzsche abandoned philology for philosophy and, over the next decade, worked out his philosophy on the freedom of the individual. The core of Nietzsche’s work was to find meaning and morality in the absence of God. He contended that the Christian system of faith and worship was not only incorrect but also detrimental to society because it allowed the weak to rule the strong. In other words, Christian philosophy repressed the will to power, which was the driving force of human character.
In his most celebrated work, Thus Spake Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen; 1893–91,) Nietzsche presented his conception of the Übermensch (‘Superman,’) who transcends slavish Christianity and rises above the restrictions of ordinary morality through his creative “will to power.” The Nazi party misappropriated this concept of the idealized man who is strong, positive, and able to impose his wishes upon the weak and worthless.
Nietzsche’s other renowned works include Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse; 1886) and On the Genealogy of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral; 1887.) His autobiography, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is (Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist) was completed in 1888, but withheld by his sister and published only in 1908.
In 1889, Nietzsche had a complete mental and physical breakdown. He was nursed for the next 12 years by his mother and his sister but never recovered his sanity.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Friedrich Nietzsche
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Truth, Perseverance
Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
He who cannot command himself should obey. And many can command themselves, but much is still lacking before they can obey themselves.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Action
O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed?
I slept my sleep—,
From deepest dream I’ve woke, and plead:
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day could read.
Deep is its woe—,
Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
Woe saith: Hence! Go!
But joys all want eternity,
Want deep, profound eternity!
—Friedrich Nietzsche
We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Strength, Adversity
The word ”Christianity” is already a misunderstanding—in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Religion, Christianity
When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate things.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Lies, Deception/Lying
Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Wisdom
Man is much more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Insults
In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Intelligence
Better know nothing than half-know many things.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Knowledge
We ought to fear a man who hates himself, for we are at risk of becoming victims of his anger and revenge. Let us then try to lure him into self-love.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Revenge
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Friendship
Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Thinking
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions—as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Enduring habits I hate…. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Knowledge
Art is the proper task of life.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Art
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Strength
The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Growth, Life, Courage
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Inner-child
I have used these weeks to revalue values. Do you understand this expression?. When you come right down to it, the alchemist is the most praiseworthy of men: I mean the one who changes something negligible or contemptible into something of value, even gold. He alone enriches, the others merely exchange. My task is quite singular this time: I have asked myself what mankind has always hated, feared, and despised the most.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Authors & Writing
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Adversity, Goals, Aspirations, Determination, Life
The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Youth, Conformity, Attitude
Man… cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Past, The Past, Time
Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Vision
Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations—always darker, emptier, simpler than these.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Feelings
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