Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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Friedrich Nietzsche declared ‘God is dead’ in his 1882 work The Gay Science. He wrote major philosophical texts including Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1883-1885 and Beyond Good and Evil 1886. Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown at age 44 after witnessing a horse being beaten, lived his final years with his mother and sister, and died in 1900 from pneumonia.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Friedrich Nietzsche — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Friedrich Nietzsche by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Friedrich Nietzsche — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Nietzsche’s father, a Lutheran pastor, died when he was 5 years old, leaving him surrounded by five women: his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and his sister Elisabeth. He attended the prestigious Landesschule Pforta from 1858 to 1864, studying music and Greco-Roman culture. Later, he studied at the universities of Bonn, Leipzig, and Basel, where he became a professor of classical philology at age 24 without a formal doctorate examination.
Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, in 1872 at age 27. His most famous works include The Gay Science 1882, where he introduced God is dead, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1883-1885, outlining the Ãœbermensch. In 1886 he wrote Beyond Good and Evil, followed by On the Genealogy of Morality 1887 and Twilight of the Idols 1888. The radical Antichrist also appeared in 1888. Nietzsche resigned from his Basel professorship in 1879 due to severe migraines and near-blindness.
Nietzsche never married, though he proposed twice. In 1876, he proposed to Mathilde Trampedach via a letter delivered by her boyfriend, conductor Hugo von Senger. In 1882, he proposed to Lou Salomé through her lover, philosopher Paul Ree; both women rejected him. He broke with his former mentor Richard Wagner after the Bayreuth festival. Suffering from migraines, progressive blindness, and syphilis, he suffered a mental breakdown in 1889 after seeing a horse whipped in Turin. He spent his final years cared for by his mother and sister in Naumburg and Weimar, dying of pneumonia in 1900.
Nietzsche’s ideas gained posthumous recognition among existentialists and postmodern philosophers. His concept of the Ãœbermensch influenced the creation of Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938. He was inducted into the International Mustache Hall of Fame in 2017. His declaration God is dead remains one of the most famous philosophical statements. Despite misinterpretations, his radical critique of morality and advocacy for individual authenticity continue to challenge readers worldwide.
Friedrich Nietzsche's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Friedrich Nietzsche — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
Of All That Is Written I Love Only What a Man Has Written with His Blood…Whoever Writes in Blood and Aphorisms Does Not Want to Be Read but to Be Learned by Heart.
We Should Consider Every Day Lost on Which We Have Not Danced at Least Once. and We Should Call Every Truth False Which Was Not Accompanied by at Least One Laugh.
I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite.
I Am by Far the Most Terrible Human Being There Has Ever Been; This Does Not Mean I Shall Not Be the Most Beneficent…
That Which Is Done Out of Love Always Takes Place Beyond Good and Evil.
Mighty Waters Draw Much Stone and Rubble Along with Them, Mighty Spirits Many Stupid and Bewildered Heads.
The Irrationality of a Thing Is No Argument Against Its Existence, Rather a Condition of It.
One Hears Only Those Questions for Which One Is Able to Find Answers.
The Higher We Soar, the Smaller We Seem to Those Who Cannot Fly.
I Love the Great Despisers. Man Is Something That Must Be Overcome…
True, We Love Life, Not Because We Are Used to Living but Because We Are Used to Loving. There Is Always Some Madness in Love. but There Is Also Always Some Reason in Madness…
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.
Why Does Man Not See Things? He Is Himself Standing in the Way: He Conceals Things.
The Man of Knowledge Must Be Able Not Only to Love His Enemies but Also to Hate His Friends.
Ultimately, No One Can Extract from Things, Books Included, More Than He Already Knows.
So Long as You Are Praised Think Only That You Are Not yet on Your Own Path but on That of Another.
We Are Like Shop Windows in Which We Are Continually Arranging, Concealing or Illuminating the Supposed Qualities Others Ascribe to Us-in Order to Deceive Ourselves.
How Can Anyone Become a Thinker If He Does Not Spend at Least a Third of the Day Without Passions, People and Books?
He Who Considers More Deeply Knows That, Whatever His Acts and Judgments May Be, He Is Always Wrong.
Either We Have No Dreams or Our Dreams Are Interesting. We Should Learn to Arrange Our Waking Life the Same Way: Nothing or Interesting.
To Live Alone One Must Be an Animal or a God, Says Aristotle. There Is yet a Third Case: One Must Be Both – a Philosopher.
Remedium Amoris – the Cure for Love Is Still in Most Cases That Ancient Radical Medicine: Love in Return.
There Are No Moral Phenomena at All, Only a Moral Interpretation of Phenomena.
Convictions Are More Dangerous Enemies of Truth Than Lies.
Madness Is Something Rare in Individuals-but in Groups, Parties, Peoples, Ages It Is the Rule.
Growth in Wisdom Can Be Measured Precisely by Decline in Bile.
A Woman Does Not Want the Truth; What Is Truth to Women? from the Beginning, Nothing Has Been More Alien, Repugnant, and Hostile to Woman Than the Truth – Her Great Art Is the Lie, Her Highest Concern Is Mere Appearance and Beauty.
It Was Christianity Which First Painted the Devil on the Worlds Wall; It Was Christianity Which First Brought Sin into the World. Belief in the Cure Which It Offered Has Now Been Shaken to It’s Deepest Roots; but Belief in the Sickness Which It Taught and Propagated Continues to Exist’.
Woman Was God’s Second Mistake.
Out of Chaos Comes Order.
He Who Would Learn to Fly One Day Must First Learn to Stand and Walk and Run and Climb and Dance. One Cannot Fly into Flying.
The Christian Resolution to See the World as Ugly and Bad Has Made the World Ugly and Bad.
The Surest Way to Corrupt a Youth Is to Instruct Him to Hold in Higher Esteem Those Who Think Alike Than Those Who Think Differently.
Life Without Music Would Be a Mistake.
Whoever Lives for the Sake of Combatting an Enemy Has an Interest in the Enemy’s Survival.
I Know My Fate. One Day There Will Be Associated with My Name the Recollection of Something Frightful – of a Crisis Like No Other Before on Earth, of the Profoundest Collision of Conscience, of a Decision Evoked Against Everything That Until Then Had Been Believed In, Demanded, Sanctified. I Am Not a Man I Am Dynamite.
Only the Day After Tomorrow Belongs to Me. Some Are Born Posthumously.
Not Every One Has the Right to Be an Egoist. Whereas in Some Egoism Would Be a Virtue, in Others It May Be an Insufferable Vice Which Should Be Stamped Out at All Costs.
Selfishness Has as Much Value as the Physiological Value of Him Who Possesses It: It May Be Very Valuable or It May Be Vile and Contemptible. Each Individual May Be Looked at with Respect to Whether He Represents an Ascending or a Descending Line of Life. When That Is Determined, We Have a Canon for Determining the Value of His Selfishness. If He Represent the Ascent in the Line of Life, His Value Is in Fact Very Great – and on Account of the Collective Life Which in Him Makes a Further Step, the Concern About His Maintenance, About Providing His Optimum of Conditions, May Even Be Extreme. . . . If He Represent Descending Development, Decay, Chronic Degeneration, or Sickening, He Has Little Worth, and the Greatest Fairness Would Have Him Take Away as Little as Possible from the Well-constituted. He Is Then No More Than Their Parasite.
For Believe Me!-the Secret of Realizing the Greatest Fruitfulness and the Greatest Enjoyment of Existence Is: to Live Dangerously! Build Your Cities on the Slopes of Vesuvius! Send Your Ships Out into Uncharted Seas! Live in Conflict with Your Equals and with Yourselves! Be Robbers and Ravagers as Long as You Cannot Be Rulers and Owners, You Men of Knowledge! the Time Will Soon Be Past When You Could Be Content to Live Concealed in the Woods Like Timid Deer!
The Word Christianity Is Already a Misunderstanding – in Reality There Has Been Only One Christian, and He Died on the Cross.
The Man of Knowledge Must Not Only Be Able to Love His Enemies but Also to Hate His Friends.
That Faith Makes Blessed Under Certain Circumstances, That Blessedness Does Not Make of a Fixed Idea a True Idea, That Faith Moves No Mountains but Puts Mountains Where There Are None: a Quick Walk Through a Madhouse Enlightens One Sufficiently About This.
The Earth Has Become Small, and Upon It Hops the Ultimate Man, Who Makes Everything Small. His Race Is as Inexterminable as the Flea; the Ultimate Man Lives Longest. We Have Discovered Happiness, Say the Ultimate Men and Blink. . . . They Still Work, for Work Is Entertainment. but They Take Care the Entertainment Does Not Exhaust Them. Nobody Grows Rich or Poor Any More: Both Are Too Much of a Burden. Who Still Wants to Rule? Who Obey? Both Are Too Much of a Burden.
Christianity Is the Metaphysics of the Hangman.
Of All That a Man Has Written, I Want to Know What He Has Written in His Own Blood.
Every Church Is a Stone on the Grave of a God-Man. They Do Not Want Him to Rise up Again Under Any Circumstances.
Fear Is the Mother of Morality.
Without Cruelty There Is No Festival. There Is Much About Punishment That Is Festive.
Convictions Are Greater Enemies to the Truth Than Lies.
Little-known facts about Friedrich Nietzsche — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
At 27, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy in 1872.
He earned his doctorate at 24 without a formal examination and became a professor of classical philology.
At 21, Nietzsche applied for Swiss citizenship and renounced his Prussian citizenship; when naturalization failed, he remained stateless.
Nietzsche abstained from both alcohol and coffee throughout his adult life.
Though a lifelong bachelor, Nietzsche proposed twice: to Mathilde Trampedach in 1876 via a letter delivered by her boyfriend and to Lou Salomé in 1882 sent through her lover Paul Ree; both declined.
In 1888, Nietzsche coined the term Super Man; five decades later, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster used it to create Superman.
He became the youngest holder of the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel at age 24.
In 2017, Nietzsche was inducted into the International Mustache Hall of Fame in the Historical Figure category.
Nietzsche’s father, a Lutheran pastor, died when he was 5 years old.
OneRepublic’s song Counting Stars includes the line everything that kills me makes me feel alive.
He became a professor of classical philology at Basel University at 24 years old.
The webcomic Dead Philosophers in Heaven lampoons Nietzsche humorously.
Nietzsche is one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Friedrich Nietzsche.
Celebrities similar to Friedrich Nietzsche — same craft, ranked by reach.
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