Q0496

Friedrich Nietzsche

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman — a rope over an abyss.
Thinker Friedrich Nietzsche
School Proto-Existentialism
Source Zarathustra, Prologue
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Zarathustra, Prologue, within the tradition of Proto-Existentialism. 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.). Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman — a rope over an abyss. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0496

MLA: Friedrich Nietzsche. “Man is a rope stretched between animal and….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0496.

Chicago: Friedrich Nietzsche. “Man is a rope stretched between animal and….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0496.

Same thinker

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

  1. From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger.
  2. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!
  3. How one becomes what one is.
  4. Man is something that shall be overcome.
  5. This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more…

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