Love, too, has to be learned.
— The Gay Science
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and writer who began his career as a classical philologist. In 1869, at age 24, he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but health problems led him to resign in 1879.
He then lived as an independent writer, often in solitude and financial insecurity, moving between Switzerland, Italy and southern France, and completed much of his core writing in the following decade. His work spans poetry, cultural criticism and philosophical essays, with a fondness for aphorisms and irony. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a neurological collapse and lived his remaining 11 years in the care of his mother and later his sister. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil are his most quoted works in our library.
He then lived as an independent writer, often in solitude and financial insecurity, moving between Switzerland, Italy and southern France, and completed much of his core writing in the following decade. His work spans poetry, cultural criticism and philosophical essays, with a fondness for aphorisms and irony. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a neurological collapse and lived his remaining 11 years in the care of his mother and later his sister. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil are his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra 72
- Beyond Good and Evil 36
- Human, All Too Human 28
- The Gay Science 23
- On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo 15
- Twilight of the Idols 15
Without music, life would be a mistake.
— Twilight of the Idols
Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.
— Beyond Good and Evil
As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.
— Human, All Too Human
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.
— Untimely Meditations
Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this
— Untimely Meditations
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.
— Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
Your educators can only be your liberators.
— Untimely Meditations
The man consummatig his life dies his death triumphantly, surrounded by men filled with hope and making solmn vows, thus one should learn to die. Friedrich Nietzsche - thus spoke zarathustra.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The more thoroughly a person understands life, the less he will mock, though in the end he might still mock the "thoroughness of his understanding.
— Human, All Too Human
No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.
— Human, All Too Human
There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.
— A Nietzsche Reader
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.
— On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life
One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.
— Human, All Too Human
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
— Twilight of the Idols
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
— The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings
Knowledge kills action action requires the veils of illusion.
— The Birth of Tragedy
In large States public education will always be extremely mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is at best only mediocre.
— Human, All Too Human
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
— Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden
None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.
— Human, All Too Human
Do you love tragedies and everything that breaks the heart?
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra