Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, classical philologist, and cultural critic. He challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality, declaring that God is dead and proposing a revaluation of values. His works include Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morality. He developed concepts including the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and the ubermensch. His writing decisively influenced existentialism, postmodernism, and twentieth-century literature.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Existentialism, Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
Quotes that are not actually from Friedrich Nietzsche
These lines are widely circulated as Friedrich Nietzsche, but they do not appear in Friedrich Nietzsche's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Although evocative of Nietzsche's recurring use of dance and music as metaphors for life-affirmation, this exact line does not appear in any of his published or notebook works. It is a 20th-century aphorism with no identified original author.
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“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
This sentence is widely circulated online as Nietzsche but does not appear in any of his published or notebook works. The actual author has not been identified.