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
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Sleep
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Hope
Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Rationality, Truth
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Strength
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Men
What is wanted—whether this is admitted or not—is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Individuality
If one uses one’s intellect to become master over the unlimited emotions, it may produce a sorry and diversionary effect upon the intellect.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Emotions
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
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Atheism
Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Appearance
Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Memory
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Faith
Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Attitude
In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Poverty
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Humility, Wishes, One liners
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Men, Men and Women, Women, Men & Women
Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend’s emancipator.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Self-Discovery
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Facts
I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Lies
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Order, Arts, Artists, Art
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Women
Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Wisdom, Death, Life
Mastery.- We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Mastery, Achieve, Action
Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Shame
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Laughter
In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of form.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Architecture
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Friends, Friendship
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.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: God, Religion
Christianity makes suffering contagious.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Topics: Christians, Religion, Christianity
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