Friedrich Quotes & Sayings

Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse. — Friedrich Schiller

What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone. — Friedrich Durrenmatt

My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth! — Friedrich Nietzsche

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire ... — Friedrich Engels

They are not so much afraid of ennui as of labour without pleasure; — Friedrich Nietzsche

The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is to die soon. — Friedrich Nietzsche

With sturdy shoulders, space stands opposing all its weight to nothingness. Where space is, there is being. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Warfare is the father of all good things, it is also the father of good prose! — Friedrich Nietzsche

In August, 1900, [Friedrich] Nietzsche was laid to rest Nietzsche, as the apostle of atheism, heralded the darkest century the world has ever known. — Benjamin Wiker

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. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You say that a good cause will even sanctify war! I tell you, it is the good war that sanctifies every cause! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him. — Friedrich Schiller

What we experience in dreams - assuming that we experience it often - belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom. — Friedrich Schiller

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately 'create the future of mankind' — Friedrich August Von Hayek

To lay aside all prejudices, is to lay aside all principles. He who is destitute of principles is governed by whims. — Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together. — Friedrich Engels

The existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? — Friedrich Nietzsche

You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most. — Friedrich Nietzsche

truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all. . . . — Friedrich Nietzsche

Precisely this is godliness
that there are gods, but no God. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth? Teach him to value thinking alike more than thinking differently. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith ... include the following: that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. — Friedrich Nietzsche

One physiological precondition is indispensible for there to be art: intoxication, or the feeling of fullness and increasing strenth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Industry entirely left to itself, would soon fall to ruin, and a nation letting everything alone would commit suicide. — Friedrich List

Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is easy to kill when you don't see your victim. — Friedrich Durrenmatt

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, 'I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself? — Friedrich Nietzsche

When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences
their insignificant, everyday experiences
so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others
and how many there are!
are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed ...
When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Are you one who looks on? or lends a hand? - or who looks away, sidles off? ... Third question for the conscience. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Lacking strength beauty hates the understanding for asking of her what it cannot do but the life of spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It is only because man believes himself to be free, not because he is free, that he experiences remorse and pricks of conscience. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no more dreary or more repulsive creature than the man who has evaded his genius. — Friedrich Nietzsche

One has to know the size of one's stomach. — Friedrich Nietzsche

... if you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible stress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of pity you also harbor another religion in your heart that is perhaps the mother of the religion of pity: the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Genuine art . . . does not have as its object a mere transitory game. Its serious purpose is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to MAKE him free. — Friedrich Schiller

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by fighting. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: he leaves the city. — Friedrich Nietzsche

One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He wants to be known deep down, abysmally deep down, before he is capable of being loved at all; he dares to let himself be fathomed. He feels that his beloved is fully in his possession only when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for his devilry and hidden insatiability as for his graciousness, patience, and spirituality. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In true love it is the soul that envelops the body. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Something might be true, even if it is also harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For today the petty people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery. — Friedrich Schiller

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If one writes or reads novels from the point of view of psychology, it is very inconsistent and petty to want to shy away from even the slowest and most detailed analysis of the most unnatural lusts, gruesome tortures, shocking infamy, and disgusting sensual or spiritual impotence. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The humanity of famous intellectuals lies in being wrong with gracious courtesy when dealing with those who are not famous. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart
and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Beauty is merely the Spiritual making itself known sensuously. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Every man in creating the beautiful appearance of the dream worlds is a perfect artist. — Friedrich Nietzsche

All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development. — Friedrich Engels

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary - but love it — Friedrich Nietzsche

Cookery, or the art of preparing good and wholesome food, and of preserving all sorts of alimentary substances in a state fit for human sustenance, or rendering that agreeable to the taste which is essential to the support of life, and of pleasing the palate without injury to the system, is, strictly speaking, a branch of chemistry; but, important as it is both to our enjoyments and our health, it is also one of the latest cultivated branches of the science. — Friedrich Accum

He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In England, wit is at least a profession, if not an art. everything becomes professional there, and even the rogues of that islandare pedants. So are the "wits" there too. They introduce into reality absolute freedom whose reflection lends a romantic and piquant air to wit, and thus they live wittily; hence their talent for madness. They die for their principles. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Humor is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience — Friedrich Nietzsche

No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations. — Friedrich Engels

To love mankind for the sake of God-that has been the most nobel and far-fetched feeling yet achieved by human beings. The idea that without some sanctifying ulterior motive, a love of mankind is just one more brutish stupidity, that the predisposition to such a love must first find its weight, its refinement, its grain of salt and pinch of ambergris in another even higher predisposition-whoever first felt and 'witnessed' this, and however much his tongue may have stuttered in attempting to express such a delicate idea: may he remain forever venerable and holy in our sight as the man who as yet has flown the highest and erred the most beautifully! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. — Friedrich Nietzsche

World history is the world's court — Friedrich Schiller

Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

[T]he vanity of the contents" of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests " ... since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If you want to love you must serve, if you want freedom you must die. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For believe me! - the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: - it will want to rule and possess, and you with it! — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot. — Friedrich Nietzsche

All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State ... For Truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said
and did not say. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am a man, and God is hiding from us humans. We are unable to see Him, we can only search for Him. — Friedrich Durrenmatt

There is no answer in the available literature to the question why a government monopoly of the provision of money is universally regarded as indispensable ... It has the defects of all monopolies. — Friedrich Hayek

man's being is essentially his own deed. — Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it - so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. — Friedrich Nietzsche

One mentions many artists who are actually art works of nature. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

He does not wear a twitching, mobile, human face, but rather a mask, as it were, with its features in dignified equilibrium; he does not shout, nor does he even change his tone of voice. If a veritable storm-cloud empties itself on his head, he wraps himself in his cloak and slowly walks away from under it. — Friedrich Nietzsche