11 Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes on Motivation

Friedrich Nietzsche quotes on motivation

51. In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.

52. It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets how to make war. And yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort of the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking that a people needs when it is losing its vitality.

61. It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally - and verily, it should not be denied them. They are forces of the greatest importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness.

85. For believe me! - the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: - it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

110. Es ist wahr: wir lieben das Leben, nicht, weil wir an's Leben, sondern weil wir an's Lieben gewohnt sind.

114. Im Gebirge ist der nachste Weg von Gipfel zu Gipfel: aber dazu musst du lange Beine haben. Spruche sollen Gipfel sein: und Die, zu denen gesprochen wird, Grosse und Hochwuchsige.

123. Woher kommen die hochsten Berge? so fragte ich einst. Da lernte ich, da? sie aus dem Meere kommen. Dies Zeugnis ist in ihr Gestein geschrieben und in die Wande ihrer Gipfel. Aus dem Tiefsten mu? das Hochste zu seiner Hohe kommen.

170. First principle: one must need to be strong - otherwise one will never become strong. - Those large hothouses [Treibhauser] for the strong, for the strongest kind of human being that has ever been, the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand the word freedom: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers ...

172. What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

181. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.

212. At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)