Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

What has shaken me is not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

Your educators can only be your liberators.

Only fool! Only poet!
Merely speaking colorfully,
From fools' masks shouting colorfully,
Climbing about on deceptive word-bridges,
On misleading rainbows,
Between false heavens
Rambling, lurking —
Only fool! Only poet!

Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

"The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all — is called "life."
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft — and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves."

The Philology of Christianity. — How little Christianity cultivates the sense of honesty can be inferred from the character of the writings of its learned men. They set out their conjectures as audaciously as if they were dogmas, and are but seldom at a disadvantage in regard to the interpretation of Scripture. Their continual cry is: “I am right, for it is written”—and then follows an explanation so shameless and capricious that a philologist, when he hears it, must stand stock-still between anger and laughter, asking himself again and again: Is it possible? Is it honest? Is it even decent?
It is only those who never—or always—attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of the art of false reading.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far, was therefore accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on earth.

We can destroy only as creators

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.... Knowledge—a form of asceticism.—They are the most honourable kind of men: but that does not prevent them being the most cheerful and most amiable.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard.