“A rebel can be a miserable and contemptible man; but there is nothing contemptible in a revolt as such - and to be a rebel in view of contemporary society does not in itself lower the value of a man. There are even cases in which one might have to honour a rebel,because he finds something in our society against which war ought to be waged - he wakens us from our slumber.”

“The whole attitude of 'man against the world', of man as a 'world-negating' principle, of a man as the measure of the value of things, as judge of the world who places existence itself on his scales and finds it too light - the monstrous stupidity of this attitude has finally dawned on us and we are sick of it; we laugh as soon as we encounter the juxtaposition of 'man and world', separated by the sublime presumptuosness of the little word 'and!' But by laughing, haven't we simply taken contempt for man one step further?”

“In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea to receive a polluted river without becoming defiled. I bring you the Superman! He is that sea; in him your great contempt can be submerged.”

“What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.”

“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.”

“Warning to the despised. – If you have unmistakably sunk in the estimation of men you should hold on like grim death to decorum in society with others: otherwise you will betray to them that you have sunk in your own estimation too. When a man is cynical in society it is a sign that he treats himself like a dog when he is alone.”

“No one is accountable for existing at all, or for being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives. The fatality of his nature cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be. He is not the result of a special design, a will, a purpose; he is not the subject of an attempt to attain an 'ideal of man' or an 'ideal of happiness' or an 'ideal of morality'--it is absurd to want to hand over his nature to some purpose or other. We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking...One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole--there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, condemn the whole...”