A footnote of interest to any study of Also sprach Zarathustra is the degree to which the influence of Nietzsche continued to affect Strauss. His comments upon Nietzsche remain tantalizing, though at least one clear point emerges. Strauss remained uneasy about Nietzsche's views on the history of music and on Wagner's place within it. A comment in a letter to Wolfgang Golther of 5 April 1945 sets Nietzsche entirely in a musical perspective:

A year later, another letter stressed the ‘aesthetic enjoyment’ of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, though otherwise he had little good to say, even employing the familiar image of the ‘sick’ philosopher to denigrate the significance of his achievement.

Strauss seems to have returned in old age to his earlier picture of Nietzsche: brilliant insights in the midst of much that was wrong-headed, particularly about Wagner and music. Earlier, he had more positive thoughts, which are still consistent with this general trend. In a letter to Hofmannsthal of 1 June 1925, he was prepared to admit that Nietzsche might be one of a select few (others being more emphatically Goethe, Schiller and Wagner) with whom one could ‘discuss the nature of artistic creation’.