A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
The overman…Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?
When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.
When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
Also Sprach Zarathustra, Chapter 29
Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153
Only sick music makes money today.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
The Antichrist, section 16
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
The Antichrist, section 2
Christianity is called the religion of pity.
The Antichrist, Section 7
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.
We are always in our own company.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.
I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.
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.
Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
The Twilight of the Idols (1899)
For men are not equal: thus speaks justice.
I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.
What does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?
Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows
Twilight of the Idols, What I owe to the Ancients