Nietzsche Quotes

Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be. (Federico Fellini)
Neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche had the slightest interest in starting a movement – or a new system, a thought which would indeed have offended them. Both proclaimed, in Nietzsche's phrase, "Follow not me, but you!”. View quote
Rollo May
And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. View quote
Viktor Frankl
When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III "Of the three evil things”). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego. View quote
Gilles Deleuze
In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn't develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote "with his blood,” and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one's lifeblood. ... It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned. View quote
Georges Bataille
Why you exist, says Nietzsche with Søren Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance; but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can. View quote
Georg Brandes
Nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way. View quote
Georg Brandes
[Nietzsche inveighs] against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks. View quote
Georg Brandes
It appears to [Nietzsche] that the modern age has produced for imitation three types of man ... First, Rousseau's man, the Titan who raises himself ... and in his need calls upon holy nature. Then Goethe's man ... a spectator of the world ... [Third] Schopenhauer's man ... voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth. View quote
Georg Brandes
What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction. View quote
Georg Brandes
[Nietzsche] attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. At the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him. The unclean are therefore ill at ease hi his presence. (Georg Brandes)
Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." View quote
Bertrand Russell
Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.) View quote
Charles Stross
German Nazism could not have succeeded in establishing itself except as a result of the theoretical contributions of Fichte, Goethe and Nietzsche, coupled with the ingenious and mighty leadership of Hitler and his comrades. View quote
Abul Ala Maududi
I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree. View quote
Bobby Fischer
It seems to me that had I not known Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or Freud or X or Z, I should have thought just as I did, and that I found in them rather an authorization than an awakening. Above all, they taught me to cease doubting, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead me to those lands that were not uninhabitable because after all I found them already there. View quote
André Gide
Nietzsche ... does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formulations of his thought, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill. View quote
Martin Heidegger
If in Nietzsche's thinking the prior tradition of Western thought is gathered and completed in a decisive respect, then the confrontation with Nietzsche becomes one with all Western thought hitherto. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake. View quote
Ernest Gaines
Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility. View quote
Karl Jaspers
With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition. (Karl Jaspers)
To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life-that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion-or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate... If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative. View quote
Leo Strauss
The emancipation of the scholars and scientists from philosophy is according to [Nietzsche] only a part of the democratic movement, i. e. of the emancipation of the low from subordination to the high. ... The plebeian character of the contemporary scholar or scientist is due to the fact that he has no reverence for himself. View quote
Leo Strauss
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher - a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
As Nietzsche said, ‘that which doesn't kill you– '(Alexion) Will only require brief hospitalization. And if you're a Dark-Hunter, just a good day's sleep. (Danger) View quote
Sherrilyn Kenyon