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Few lines in philosophy are as famous or as misunderstood as these words from Friedrich Nietzsche. They come from a German philosopher who spent much of his life in sickness, solitude, and controversy.

Nietzsche did not live an easy life. His father died of a brain disease when Nietzsche was just four years old. Shortly after, his younger brother also died. Surrounded by grief, life hit Nietzsche quickly. He was an intellect, and by 24 he became the youngest professor ever appointed at the University of Basel.

But his health collapsed almost as quickly as his career began. Severe migraines, failing eyesight, stomach troubles, and bouts of near blindness haunted him for decades. He resigned from teaching and spent much of the rest of his life as a wanderer across Europe, writing alone in cheap boarding houses or rented rooms. He fell in love but was rejected. He dreamed of deep friendships but often pushed people away with his intensity. And eventually, his mind broke down completely; he saw a horse being whipped in the street, ran to embrace it, and collapsed in tears. He spent the last 11 years of his life in silence, cared for by his sister.

But this care came at a cost. His sister was a staunch nationalist and later an admirer of Hitler. After Nietzsche’s collapse, she took control of his manuscripts and edited, rearranged, and even mistranslated some of his work to fit her own ideology.

This distortion is part of why Nietzsche’s legacy became so controversial. His idea of the Übermensch (often translated as “superman”) was twisted into something it was never meant to be, a justification for racism, nationalism, and fascism. In reality, Nietzsche despised this authoritarian view. He believed in individual strength, not collective oppression.

It would be easy to dismiss Nietzsche as a tragic footnote. A failed professor who died obscure and insane. But his ideas have lived long. In fact, they only grew stronger. Books like Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Antichrist became some of the most widely read and debated works of philosophy in the modern world.

Nietzsche was a polarizing figure in his time and remains so today. His ideas about morality, power, suffering, and meaning don’t fit neatly into categories. He tears things down more than he builds them up. But that’s what makes him compelling.

When Nietzsche declared that God is dead, he wasn’t talking about a literal death. He meant that the traditional Christian worldview that dominated Europe for centuries was collapsing. Science, secularism, and modernity had chipped away at faith, leaving people without the shared moral foundation that religion once provided.

But Nietzsche wasn’t celebrating. He saw this as both a crisis and an opportunity. Without God, without a higher power to dictate morality, humanity would have to face a terrifying question: what now? How do we build values when the old ones no longer hold?

For Nietzsche, this wasn’t a call to despair but a call to create. The death of God meant freedom, but also responsibility. It meant humans could no longer hide behind divine authority. We had to make meaning ourselves.

Nietzsche’s life was marked by struggle, but he didn’t see struggle as a curse. For him, hardship equals growth.

Nietzsche believed most people lived borrowed lives, adopting values and habits from society without question. To “become who you are” means rejecting passivity and taking on the responsibility of shaping your own identity.

He admired strength, vitality, and creativity, not in the sense of dominating others, but in the sense of overcoming yourself. For Nietzsche, the path forward was never comfort. It was a challenge. It was becoming more than you currently are.

Nietzsche's life was filled with suffering, such as disease, heartbreak, loneliness, and eventually madness. But instead of resenting fate, Nietzsche embraced it. He argued that the only way to truly affirm life is to not just accept what happens to us but to love it.

He showed this with his thought experiment of eternal recurrence: imagine living your life, exactly as it is, over and over for eternity. Every joy, every mistake, every heartbreak repeated forever. Would you tremble? Or could you embrace it fully?

For Nietzsche, the highest strength was to say yes to life in its entirety. To not wish for it to be easier or different, but to affirm it as it is.

Nietzsche’s life ended in obscurity, yet his work became some of the most influential writing of the modern era. Psychologists like Freud and Jung drew from him. Writers from Dostoevsky to Camus engaged with him. Even in popular culture, his phrases and ideas are quoted endlessly, sometimes accurately, sometimes not.

Nietzsche doesn’t promise happiness or stability. Instead, he asks us to confront suffering, meaninglessness, and struggle and to use them as fuel for becoming stronger, more alive, and more ourselves.

He lived a life marked by pain and isolation, yet his philosophy is anything but despairing. It’s actually quite optimistic, as it teaches courage, creativity, and the push to build for a better life.

Nietzsche’s writing can be difficult to understand and interpret. He forces you into questions. And in wrestling with them, you begin the very process he valued most: becoming.

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