If you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you.
Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.
Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.
And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once! And let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!
The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice.
Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.
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 self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.
Every past is worth condemning.
In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.
Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and most modern serpents.
Learn to see – accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting-things-come-to-it; learning to defer judgment, to encircle and encompass the question on all sides.
Liberal institutions straightway cease being liberal the moment they are soundly established: Once this is attained, no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough – I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race.
There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.
A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power.
It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.
There exists above the “productive” man a yet higher species.
He turns all of his injuries into strengths, that which does not kill him makes him stronger, he is superman.
At present I am light, now I fly, now I see myself below me, now a god dances through me.
What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.