If the truth you are about to speak will not survive being said aloud, you do not yet believe it.

The truth does not care about your comfort. That is precisely why it is the truth.

A man is measured not by what he worships but by what he refuses to bow to. - original aphorism

Build something that will embarrass your fears. That is the only revenge worth taking. - original aphorism

The slave dreams of a kinder master. The free man dreams of no master at all, then wakes and goes to work. - original aphorism

Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, peoples, ages, it is the rule. - Beyond Good and Evil §156

Do not mistake the noise of many opinions for the weight of one truth. - original aphorism

I would believe only in a god who could dance. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Reading and Writing

There is no greater arrogance than telling yourself what you can and cannot become.

The strong do not need followers. They need worthy opponents.

Every comfortable belief should be put on trial at least once. The ones that survive become convictions; the rest were always costumes. - original aphorism

Pity is the most respectable disguise that contempt has ever worn. - original aphorism

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

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. - The Gay Science §381

The most concerned ask today: how is man to be maintained? Zarathustra asks: how is man to be surpassed? - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Higher Man §3

Amor fati is not resignation. It is the savage decision to love the wound that shaped you. - original aphorism

Your fate is not a sentence handed down. It is raw material. Pick it up. - original aphorism

You are not too much. You are simply too much for people who are too little. Let the sorting happen.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. You must burn the field before new things grow.

There are philosophers who want to be right and philosophers who want to be useful. I want neither. I want to be true.

When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something one really needed to know. - Beyond Good and Evil §277

The ones who changed the world were never at peace with it. Peace is for those who have surrendered.

Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for what he really knows. - Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows §2

There is a kind of strength that only grows in seasons no one applauds. Cultivate it there. - original aphorism

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? - The Gay Science

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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

The free spirit keeps no idols, not even the ones it built last year. - original aphorism

Become difficult to recruit. Every cause wants your obedience; very few deserve your fire. - original aphorism

Courage that puts ghosts to flight creates for itself goblins: it wants to laugh. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra