Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.
There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.
Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Few are made for independence, it is the privilege of the strong.
I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
Do you want to have an easy life? Then always stay with the herd and lose yourself in the herd.
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.
The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.
The Great Man… is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of ‘opinion’; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and ‘respectability,’ and altogether everything that is the ‘virtue of the herd.’ If he cannot lead, he goes alone… He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar… When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.
you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else’s.
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
