“Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.”

“Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.”

“When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.”

“Our evaluations. - All actions may be traced back to evaluations, all evaluations are original or adopted - the latter being by far the most common. Why do we adopt them? From fear - that is to say, we consider it more advisable to pretend they are our own - and accustom ourself to this pretense, so that at length it becomes our own nature. Original evaluation: that is to say, to assess a thing according to the extent to which it pleases or displeases us alone and no one else - something excessively rare! But must our evaluation of another, in which there lies motive for our general availing ourselves of his HIS evaluation, at least not proceed from US, be our OWN determination? Yes, but we arrive at it as children, and rarely learn to change our view; most of us are our whole lives long the fools of the way we acquired in childhood of judging our neighbors (their minds, rank, morality, whether they are exemplary or reprehensible) and of finding it necessary to pay homage to their evaluations.”

“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.”

“Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, positive in the strongest sense of the word, to which we owe the fact that what we simply live through, experience, take in, no more enters our consciousness during digestion (one could call it spiritual ingestion) than does the thousand-fold process which takes place with our physical consumption of food, our so-called ingestion. To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while; not to be bothered by the noise and battle which our underworld of serviceable organs work with and against each other;a little peace, a little tabula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new, above all for the nobler functions and functionaries, for ruling, predicting, predetermining (our organism runs along oligarchic lines, you see) - that, as I said, is the benefit of active forgetfulness, like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest and etiquette: from which can immediately see how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness.”

“A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people."It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.”