Nietzsche

I haven't read any work by Nietzsche before, although I am vaguely familiar with his ideas. Which one should I read first? The Gay Science? Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Twilight of the Idols? Beyond Good and Evil? Or some other work?

Find and watch the BBC movie Human All too Human #1: Nietzche to get a real good idea which one you'd like to start with.

It's a back story on Nietzche's life and how his works affected the world around him greatly, even the advent of Nazi-ism though Nietzche never openly supported the nazi regime.

Nietzsche is alright if:

A)  You're 12 - 17 years old (male) , 10 - 100 years old (female) and the world simply doesn't understand how great you truly are
B)  The Jews collaborated with the Allies and forced the fatherland to sign the Treaty of Versailles which completely fucked over your fellow countrymen
C)  You're a philosophy major in college, and you want to sound intelligent to the freshmen girls who are impressionable and retarded

Walter Kaufmann - The Portable Nietzsche

It contains the full text of Zarathustra (Nietzsche's magnum opus, really), and some other works and letters.

Beyond Good and Evil should be read once you are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy, or you probably won't have much of a clue where he's coming from. At least I didn't, when I read it as my first Nietzsche book.

Protip: it's best to start by reading a good summary of Nietzsche's philosphy in plain fucking English, before you try and dissecthis rambling tirades.

As the above poster says, you will probably grow out of Nietzsche, but there's no reason not to enjoy him when you're young. He really was a heartless fucker, and I don't think it would be cool to live in his compassionless world of suffering.