The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
933.
_In short,_ what we require is to dominate the passions and not to weaken or to extirpate them!--The greater the dominating power of the will, the greater the freedom that may be given to the passions. The "great man" is so, owing to the free scope which he gives to his desires, and to the still greater power which knows how to enlist these magnificent monsters into its service. The "good man" in every stage of civilisation is at one and the same time the _least dangerous_ and the _most useful:_ a sort of medium; the idea formed of such a man by the common mind is that he is some one _whom one has no reason to fear, but whom one must not therefore despise._ Education: essentially a means of _ruining_ exceptions in favour of the rule. Culture: essentially the means of directing taste against the exceptions in favour of the mediocre. Only when a culture can dispose of an overflow of force, is it capable of being a hothouse for the luxurious culture of the exception, of the experiment, of the danger, of the _nuance: this_ is the tendency of _every_ aristocratic culture.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.