The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
770.
The degree of resistance which has to be continually overcome in order to remain _at the top,_ is the measure of _freedom,_ whether for individuals or for societies: freedom being understood as positive power, as will to power. The highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would, according to this, in all probability be found not five feet away from its opposite--that is to say, where the danger of slavery hangs over life, like a hundred swords of Damocles. Let any one go through the whole of history from this point of view: the ages when the individual reaches perfect maturity, _i.e._ the free ages, when the classical type, _sovereign man,_ is attained to--these were certainly not humane times! There should be no choice: either one must be uppermost or nethermost--like a worm, despised, annihilated, trodden upon. One must have tyrants against one in order to become a tyrant, _i.e._ in order to be free. It is no small advantage to have a hundred swords of Damocles suspended over one: it is only thus that one learns to dance, it is only thus that one attains to any freedom in one's movements. Man more than any other animal was originally _altruistic_--hence his slow growth (child) and lofty development. Hence, too, his extraordinary and latest kind of egoism.--Beasts of prey are much more _individualistic._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.