Ethics and Morality

And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.

One is punished most for one’s virtues.

Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child - let that be your word concerning virtue!

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.

A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.

Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Dante, I think, committed a crude blunder when, with a terror-inspiring ingenuity, he placed above the gateway of his hell the inscription, 'I too was created by eternal love'--at any rate, there would be more justification for placing above the gateway to the Christian Paradise...the inscription 'I too was created by eternal hate'...

Equality before the enemy -that is the main condition to fight a fair duel. Where you have contempt, you cannot wage war; where you are in command, where you can see someone beneath you, you should not wage war.

Every past is worth condemning.

The craving for equality can express itself either as a desire to pull everyone down to our own level (by belittling them, excluding them, tripping them up) or as a desire to raise ourselves up along with everyone else (by acknowledging them, helping them, and rejoicing in their success).

A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

Nietzsche says very clearly all the way through his career that if you want to define human nature the first thing you must say is that human beings insist on value--we see the world through value colored eyes. We do not know how to look at things neutrally, value-free. So, it's not a question of giving up all values, it's simply a question of which values.

Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.

Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, “society”, inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people—“base.

The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him.

Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong again and again - the reason being they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer.... Darwin forgot the mind (- that in English): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind one must need mind - one loses it when one no longer needs it. He who possesses strength divests himself of mind.