Q0070

Friedrich Nietzsche

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger.
Thinker Friedrich Nietzsche
School Philosophy of Life
Source Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows §8
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows §8, within the tradition of Philosophy of Life. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Friedrich Nietzsche's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Friedrich Nietzsche. (n.d.). From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0070

MLA: Friedrich Nietzsche. “From the military school of life. — What….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0070.

Chicago: Friedrich Nietzsche. “From the military school of life. — What….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0070.

Same thinker

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

  1. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!
  2. How one becomes what one is.
  3. Man is something that shall be overcome.
  4. This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more…
  5. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

All quotations by Friedrich Nietzsche

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme