Thus Spake Zarathustra · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
2.
When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men. An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of “good” and “bad” ere retiring to rest. This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:—unless it be the creating one! —It is he, however, who createth man’s goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad. And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours. At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life. On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory. Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.