Top 500 Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared – this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

402. “The earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

403. “The only excuse for God is that he doesn’t exist.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

404. “The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

405. “Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving, mercy?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

406. “In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required – acting as though we do not see through the motivesof their actions.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

407. “You’re going to women? Don’t forget your whip!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

408. “Not with wrath do we kill, but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

409. “Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

410. “And it is the great noon when man stands at the midpoint of his course between beast and superman and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

411. “Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own torment it increases its own knowledge. Did you already know that?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

412. “Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

413. “Women want to serve, and this is where their happiness lies: but the free spirit does not want to be served, and this is where hishappiness lies.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

414. “Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

415. “My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

416. “Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

417. “Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

418. “Christianity, alcohol – the two great means of corruption.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

419. “War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

420. “We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, – it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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421. “The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you need to seduce the senses to it.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

422. “But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

423. “Objectivity and justice have nothing to do with one another.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

424. “This verse gets me through each day, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger! I am not afraid of anything because the lord is my shepherd!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

425. “Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

426. “I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

427. “He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

428. “Pity makes suffering contagious.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

429. “Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

430. “Probability but no truth, facility but no freedom – it is owing to these two fruits that the tree of knowledge cannot be confused with the tree of life.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

431. “Nothing in life possesses value except the degree of power – assuming that life itself is the will to power.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

432. “Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

433. “We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but the other does not usually forget it.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

434. “I have exposed myself and am not ashamed to stand there naked. “Shame” is what we call the monster that attached itself to men when they aspired beyond the animals.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

435. “Body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

436. “The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

437. “One can lie with the mouth, but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

438. “You say, it’s dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

439. “The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us – in order to deceive ourselves.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

440. “Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

441. “Love and hatred are not blind, but are blinded by the fire they bear within themselves.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

442. “Pity is extolled as the virtue of prostitutes.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

443. “Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

444. “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

445. “There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

446. “The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is still another world to be discovered – and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

447. “Only where there are graves are there resurrections.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

448. “This crown to crown the laughing man, this rose-wreath crown: I myself have set this crown upon my head, I myself have pronounced my laughter holy.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

449. “Whoever gives advice to the sick gains a sense of superiority over them, no matter whether his advice is accepted or rejected. That is why sick people who are sensitive and proud hate their advisors even more than their illnesses.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

450. “The lie is a condition of life.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche