I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame).

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

Power means happiness; power means hard work and sacrifice.

Both classically and romantically-minded spirits - in as much as these two species always exist - occupy themselves with a vision of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness - as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne - and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.