Friedrich Nietzsche

"Art is the proper task of life."

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

"Sensuality often hastens the Growth of Love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up."

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

"“One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.”"

"“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.”"

"A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling."

"“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.”"

"“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.”"

"“If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.”"

"“Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.”"

"“Plato was a bore.”"

"The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them."

"“I am one thing, my writings are another.”"

"“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.”"

"“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”"

"“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”"

"“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”"

"“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”"

"Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar."