Quotes & Sayings About Zarathustra

My formula is Amor fati: ... not only to bear up under every necessity, but to love it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT? — Friedrich Nietzsche

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

As Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra: "You must be proud of your enemy; then your enemy's successes are also your successes."87 Be proud of your competitors. Just don't follow them. — Eric Schmidt

More than a thousand years before Christ, Zarathustra preached the existence of a heaven and a hell, the idea of a bodily resurrection, the promise of a universal savior who would one day be miraculously born to a young maiden, and the expectation of a final cosmic battle that would take place at the end of time between the angelic forces of good and the demonic forces of evil. — Reza Aslan

I myself found a fascinating example of this in Nietzsche's book Thus Spake Zarathustra, where the author reproduces almost word for word an incident reported in a ship's log for the year 1686. By sheer chance I had read this seaman's yarn in a book published about 1835 (half a century before Nietzsche wrote); and when I found the similar passage in Thus Spake Zarathustra, I was struck by its peculiar style, which was different from Nietzsche's usual language. I was convinced that Nietzsche must also have seen the old book, though he made no reference to it. I wrote to his sister, who was still alive, and she confirmed that she and her brother had in fact read the book together when he was 11 years old. I think, from the context, it is inconceivable that Nietzsche had any idea that he was plagiarizing this story. I believe that fifty years later it has unexpectedly slipped into focus in his conscious mind. — C. G. Jung

Out of all these people, Zarathustra is unique. He is the only one who is not against life, who is for life; whose god is not somewhere else, whose god is nothing but another name for life itself. And to live totally, to live joyously and to live intensely, is all that religion is based on. I — Osho

The noble man wants to create something new and a new virtue. The good want the old, and that old should be preserved. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. Today you are still suffering from the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, "I am alone!" The time will come when that which seems high to you will no longer be in sight, and that which seems low will be all-too-near; even what seems sublime to you will frighten you like a ghost And you will cry, "All is false! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am Zarathustra the Godless: where shall I find my equal? All those who give themselves their own will and renounce all submission, they are my equals. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

This crown of the laughter, the rosary crown: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown! I pronounced laughter holy: you higher men, learn - to laugh! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra has become a child, an awakened one — Friedrich Nietzsche

Willing sets you free: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom
thus Zarathustra instructs you. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You love your virtue as the mother her child; but when was it heard of a mother wanting to be paid for her love? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall your eye show to me: free for what? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought Teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep Without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-Thus spoke Zarathustra. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [ ... ] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so spake: When one taketh his hump from the hunchback, then doth one take from him his spirit - so do the people teach. And when one giveth the blind man eyes, then doth he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he
curseth him who healed him. He, however, who maketh the lame man run, inflicteth upon him the greatest in him - so do the people teach concerning cripples — Friedrich Nietzsche

I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you. — Nietszche

In the later part of his creative life Nietzsche suffered acutely from loneliness. Like his alter ego, Zarathustra, he found himself alone on a (Swiss) mountain top. But, intellectually at least, he accepted this condition. Since, he reasoned, a radical social critic, a 'free spirit' such as himself, sets himself ever more in opposition to the foundational agreements on which social life depends, he reduces the pool of possible comrades, and so of possible friends, to vanishing point. — Julian Young

That which is ready to fall, shall ye also push! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Thereafter Zarathustra went on again for two hours, trusting to the path and the light of the stars: — Friedrich Nietzsche

And now we celebrate, in victory bound,
The feast of feasts:
Friend Zarathustra came, the guest of guests!
Now laughs the world, the ancient curtain's torn,
And light and darkness wedded are as one ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

But Zarathustra made it clear in which direction the answer lay; it is towards the artist-psychologist, the intuitional thinker. There are very few such men in the world's literature; the great artists are not thinkers, the great thinkers are seldom artists. — Colin Wilson

WHEN Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But finally he had a change of heart - and rising one morning with the dawn, he went before the sun, and spoke thus to it: — Friedrich Nietzsche

But when Zarathustra was alone, he addressed his heart thus: "Can it really be possible? This old holy man in his forest still hasn't received any notice that God is dead! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I have somehow something like "influence" ... In the Anti-Semitic Correspondence ... my name is mentioned in almost every issue. Zarathustra ... has charmed the anti-Semites; there is a special anti-Semitic interpretation of it that made me laugh very much. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here [Zarathustra] became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face."

"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?

When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things - when wilt thou drink this strange soul -
- When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee? — Friedrich Nietzsche

The hatred that I harbored for Lou and Paul faded into the background. The cold, lonely mountains which once filled my mouth and mind with the madness of Zarathustra shifted into a lithium passivity. Even Wagner was nothing more than a jester for some cathartic writing, allowing me to purge the bales of contempt that I had for the man. — Dylan Callens

again passed moons and years over Zarathustra's soul, and he heeded it not; his hair, however, became white. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche [10w]
Zarathustra's high-wire act is over;
the circus has left town. — Beryl Dov

But like infection is the petty thought: it creeps and hides, and wants to be nowhere
until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection ... Thus spoke Zarathustra. — Friedrich Nietzsche

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Only very few - only humans, as far as we know - achieve the second level of transcendent movement. Through this, the environment is de-restricted to become the world as an integral whole of manifest and latent elements. The second step is the work of language. This not only builds the 'house of being' - Heidegger took this phrase from Zarathustra's animals, which inform the convalescent: 'the house of being rebuilds itself eternally'; it is also the vehicle for the tendencies to run away from that house with which, by means of its inner surpluses, humans move towards the open. It need hardly be explained why the oldest parasite in the world, the world above, only appears with the second transcendence. — Peter Sloterdijk

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers. — Joni Mitchell

Zarathustra calls the good "the last men" and then 'the beginning of the end"; and above all he considers them as the most harmful kind of men because they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and at the cost of the Future. "The good - they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end. They crucify him who writes new values on new law tables; they sacrifice the future to themselves; they crucify the whole future of humanity! The good - they are always the beginning of the end. And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm of the good is the most harmful of all". — Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche is absolutely correct, even more correct today than when he wrote it in Thus Spake Zarathustra: I looked all about me for human beings but all I saw were fragments, deformed creatures with too much eye or too much ear. This is what the modern culture of specialized intellect-the kind of one-sidedness that banausic utilitarianism alone can value-works so hard to produce. — Kenny Smith

Free from what? What does Zarathustra care! But brightly your eyes should signal to me: free for what? Can — Friedrich Nietzsche

Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? - Thus Spake Zarathustra — Irvin D. Yalom

But strangers and the poor may pluck for themselves the fruit from my tree: that causes less shame. But beggars should be entirely done away with! Truly, it annoys one to give to them and it annoys one not to give to them. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones - "good" and "bad" are they called. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation - so teacheth you Zarathustra. No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me! And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving delight ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eyes are clear now, no longer does he sneer with loathing. Just see how he dances along! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and evil of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I guess I could be singing about Superman, or about Zarathustra coming down from the mountain, but in my mind I was singing about Julian Assange. I wish I could say that Nietzsche inspired my lyrics but all I can honestly say is I was inspired by the graphic design of these '70s paperback covers for Beyond Good & Evil and The Birth of Tragedy and The Gay Science. — Dean Wareham

Man is the cruelest animal," says Zarathustra. "When gazing at tragedies, bull-fights, crucifixations he hath hitherto felt happier than at any other time on Earth. And when he invented Hell ... lo, Hell was his Heaven on Earth"; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world. — Friedrich Nietzsche

And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water. — Friedrich Nietzsche

At the center of Zoroastrian theology was a unique monotheistic system based on the sole god, Ahura Mazda ("the Wise Lord"). Like most ancients, Zarathustra could not easily conceive of his god as being the source of both good and evil. He therefore developed an ethical dualism in which two opposing spirits, Spenta Mainyu ("the beneficent spirit") and Angra Mainyu ("the hostile spirit"), were responsible for good and evil, respectively. — Reza Aslan

[Zarathustra] never abandoned the watchword of not having any end, not serving a cause, because, as he knew, causes pluck off the wings we fly with. — Georges Bataille

It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who says:Who is more ungodly than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra received his revelations from the archangels at age thirty, when he began his prophetic mission; Siddhartha's great renunciation of his princely life took place in his thirtieth year. Thoreau at age thirty finished his self-imposed isolation at Walden Pond. — Kevin Dann

You call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling thought and not that you have escaped a yoke. Are you such a one as was permitted to escape a yoke? There are some who threw away their ultimate worth when they threw away their servitude. Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! But your eyes should announce to me brightly: free for what? — Friedrich Nietzsche

To live as I incline, or not to live at all: so do I wish; so wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have I still - inclination?
Have I-still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set?
A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.
What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; and unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.
This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra, the first to recognize that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist though perhaps more detrimental says: "Good men never speak the truth. The Good preach of false shores and false security. You were born and bred in the lies of the good. Through the good everything has become false and twisted down to the very roots". Fortunately the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness ; to desire everybody to become a "good man", "a herd animal", blue-eyed, benevolent, "a beautiful soul" - or, as Herbert Spencer wished - altruistic, would mean robbing existence of its great character, to castrate mankind and reduce humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some have tried to do! It is precisely this that men have called morality. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Hunger attacks me," said Zarathustra, "like a robber. Among forests and swamps my hunger attacks me, and late in the night. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra: Do you have words? Do your words belong to you?
Giannina: No, my answer is no. I have no property in the dictionary. Words are anonymous like the disenfranchised masses that haven't been weighed - or named - or framed. My words belong to those who don't belong. — Giannina Braschi

Why?" said Zarathustra. "Thou askest why? I do not belong to those who may be asked after their Why. — Friedrich Nietzsche

And even to me, one who likes life, it seems butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is of their kind among human beings know most about happiness.
To see these light, foolish, delicate, sensitive little souls fluttering
that seduces Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I would only believe in a god who knew how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, there I found him earnest, thorough, deep, somber; it was the spirit of gravity
through him all things fall.
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughing. Up, let us kill the spirit of gravity! — Friedrich Nietzsche