Friedrich Nietzsche
Thursday, 13 November 2025
Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human (A book for free spirits) was published in 1878, following the breakdown in friendship with composer Richard Wagner. Nietzsche dedicated the original to Voltaire.
It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
Human, All Too Human (1878). II.353
Nietzsche Quotes
Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the heart; but now it has first to burden the heart so as afterwards to be able to lighten it. Consequently it shall perish.
Human, all too Human
Nietzsche Quotes
A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.
Human, All Too Human (1878). II.202
Nietzsche Quotes
The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.
Human, All Too Human
Nietzsche Quotes
On its political sickbed, a people usually regenerates itself and finds its spirit again, which had been lost gradually in the seeking and claiming of power. Culture owes its highest achievements to politically weakened times.
Human, All too Human, Section 8, Paragraph 465
Nietzsche Quotes
The interests of tutelary government and the interests of religion go together hand in hand, so that if the latter begins to die out, the foundation of the state will also be shaken. The belief in a divine order of political affairs, in a mysterium in the existence of the state, has a religious origin; if religion disappears, the state will inevitably lose its old veil of Isis and no longer awaken awe. The sovereignty of the people, seen closely, serves to scare off even the last trace of magic and superstition contained in these feelings; modern democracy is the historical form of the decline of the state.
Human, All too Human, Section 8, Paragraph 472
Nietzsche Quotes
Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.
Human, All Too Human (1878). II.122
Nietzsche Quotes
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Human, All Too Human (1878). II.137
Nietzsche Quotes
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
Human, All Too Human (1878). I.74
Nietzsche Quotes
Family failing of philosophers. - All philosophers have the common failing of starting out from man as he is now and thinking they can reach their goal through an analysis of him. They involuntarily think of 'man' as an aeterna veritas, as something that remains constant in the midst of all flux, as a sure measure of things. Everything the philosopher has declared about man is, however, at bottom no more than a testimony as to the man of a very limited period of time. Lack of historical sense is the family failing of all philosophers.
Human, all too Human, s.2,
Nietzsche Quotes
Truth as Circe. - Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?
Human, all too Human, s.519
Nietzsche Quotes
In the stream. - Mighty waters draw much stone and rubble along with them; mighty spirits many stupid and bewildered heads.
Human, all too Human, s.541
Nietzsche Quotes
Friedrich Nietzsche Quote of the Day
Thursday, 13 November 2025Mankind is a rope tied between beast and superman -- a rope over an abyss.Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, "Prologue," section 4 (1883).
