A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions, as attempts to find out something. - The Gay Science §41

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Reading and Writing

The coward dies a thousand times. The creator dies once, and only because the body finally gives up.

The person who has never been hated has never said anything worth hearing.

Anyone who has not been broken by his own depth has not yet reached it.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity. - Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows §26

A man is productive only insofar as he is rich in contrasted instincts; he can remain young only on condition the soul does not relax. - Twilight of the Idols

They will call you intense. They mean you make them feel the weight of their own mediocrity.

The one who knows why can endure almost any how, yes. But the one who knows why is also the loneliest person in the room.

Self-pity is the lullaby the defeated sing to themselves. Stop singing it.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - The Gay Science

To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is. - Ecce Homo, Why I Am So Clever §9

One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive. - Ecce Homo

The herd loves a prophet who is already dead. Living prophets are inconvenient.

Do not seek the truth that confirms you. Seek the one that costs you something. That is how you know it is yours. - original aphorism

Self-knowledge is not a gift. It is a wound that never fully heals.

You were given solitude because the work you must do requires a silence the crowd cannot provide.

Comfort is the slow poison of the spirit. The soul grows only through resistance.

Do not trust any philosophy that makes you more comfortable. Comfort is the enemy of becoming.

Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems: that is what I called Dionysian. - Twilight of the Idols, What I Owe to the Ancients §5

I have done that, says my memory. I cannot have done that, says my pride. Eventually, memory yields. - Beyond Good and Evil §68

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Reading and Writing

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The softest revenge is to become so undeniable that the people who doubted you have to rewrite their own memories.

Every great life contains at least one door you had to walk through alone. That door is where you were actually born.

You will not become yourself by imitating the free. You will become yourself by refusing to imitate anyone.

What you call burnout is sometimes the soul refusing to serve a life it did not choose.

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

You do not have a self yet. You have a collection of inherited reflexes wearing your name. - original aphorism

The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously. - The Gay Science §283

It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives otherwise. - Beyond Good and Evil §27

The price of being interesting is being misunderstood by everyone who values being ordinary.

The mediocre do not fear failure. They fear being seen. There is a difference.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Despisers of the Body

The world does not reward the talented. It rewards the relentless. The talented are simply easier to forget.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. - Beyond Good and Evil

One thing is needful: to give style to one's character. A great and rare art. - The Gay Science §290

Moralists who have never done anything dangerous do not get to write the rules about danger.

Do not confuse being loved with being seen. Many are loved for what they are not.

Whoever has not failed publicly has not yet risked anything worth telling a stranger. - original aphorism

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. - Human, All Too Human

They call it arrogance. I call it refusing to apologize for having a vision.

Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is free from the crowd. - Beyond Good and Evil §26

The coward dies a thousand times. The creator dies once, and only because the body finally gives up.

Error is not blindness, error is cowardice. - Ecce Homo, Why I Am So Wise §3

The easiest lie to believe is the one everyone else is already living.

Solitude does not produce greatness. It removes the noise so you can hear whether anything was ever in you. - original aphorism

A single hour of honest thinking is worth more than a decade of comfortable certainty.

How much truth can a spirit endure, how much truth can it dare? That became for me the real measure of value. - Ecce Homo, Foreword §3

Dreams are a test. Most people fail by waking up.