Friedrich Nietzsche on Stoicism Quotes

"A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things."

"One should hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too."

"The Stoic morality is a morality for slaves who wish to feel like masters by denying their own needs."

"The Stoic's indifference is a defense mechanism against a world that he can no longer control or understand."

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!"

"Hardness is the first virtue of the free spirit. One must be able to endure the cold and the silence of the heights."

"The Stoic's pride is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He believes he is equal to the gods, but he is only a man who has learned to hide his pain."

"He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary."

"Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood."

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

"The Stoics were the masters of self-overcoming, but they forgot that the body and its passions are also part of the self."

"The Stoic identifies his own will with the will of the universe. This is a grand and noble pride, but it is also a profound delusion."

"To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both—a philosopher."

"The Stoic finds peace in the realization that he cannot change the world. I find power in the realization that I can create my own world."

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

"The Stoic is a physician of the soul who prescribes the same medicine for every illness: indifference."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe."

"Stoicism is a kind of self-tyranny. You want to make nature into a mirror of your own soul, to impose your own morality and your own ideal on nature."

"The Stoic sage is an ideal of the past. The man of the future will be a creator, not a mere endurer of life."

"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!"

"To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion what one is. This is the paradox of self-discipline."

"Is it not better to suffer and feel than to be a Stoic and feel nothing at all? Life is suffering, but it is also joy."

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness."

"One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

"Stoicism may be indispensable for certain times, as a means of hardening oneself against the external world, but it remains a cold and rigid doctrine."

"Everything that is rare is for the rare. The Stoic path is not for the many, but for the few who can endure solitude."

"The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'"

"The Stoic sage is a man who has become a cold, unmoving statue in the face of life's tragedies. But is this life, or merely the denial of life?"

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

"The Stoic says: 'Do not let the world touch you.' I say: 'Let the world consume you, so that you may be reborn.'"

"Spirit is the life which itself cutteth into life: by its own agony doth it increase its own knowledge."

"One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can endure to be with oneself and not roam about."

"The Stoic attempts to extinguish the fire of passion, but without that fire, the spirit becomes a cold ash."