The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
887.
Where the _strongest natures_ are to be sought. The ruin and degeneration of the _solitary_ species is much greater and more terrible: they have the instincts of the herd, and the tradition of values, against them; their weapons of defence, their instincts of self-preservation, are from the beginning insufficiently strong and reliable--fortune must be peculiarly favourable to them if they are _to prosper_ (they prosper best in the lowest ranks and dregs of society; if ye are seeking _personalities_ it is there that ye will find them with much greater certainty than in the middle classes!) When the dispute between ranks and classes, which aims at equality of rights, is almost settled, the fight will begin against the _solitary person._ (In a certain sense _the latter can maintain and develop himself most easily in a democratic society:_ there where the coarser means of defence are no longer necessary, and a certain habit of order, honesty, justice, trust, is already a general condition.) The _strongest_ must be most tightly bound, most strictly watched, laid in chains and supervised: this is the instinct of the herd. To them belongs a régime of self-mastery, of ascetic detachment, of "duties" consisting in exhausting work, in which one can no longer call one's soul one's own.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.