A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods! He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come from the ‘beyond’!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate? Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity! Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man. And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves— and who want to go where I want to go.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overran: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment… (…) Man is a rope, tied between beast and overran—a rope over an abyss… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

All good things are powerful stimulants to life, even a good book written against life.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche