The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
964.
The great man is conscious of his power over a people, and of the fact that he coincides temporarily with a people or with a century--this _magnifying_ of his self-consciousness as _causa_ and _voluntas_ is _misunderstood_ as "altruism": he feels driven to _means_ of communication: all great men are _inventive_ in such means. They want to form great communities in their own image; they would fain give multiformity and disorder definite shape; it stimulates them to behold chaos. The misunderstanding of love. There is a _slavish_ love which subordinates itself and gives itself away--which idealises and deceives itself; there is a _divine_ species of love which despises and loves at the same time, and which _remodels_ and _elevates_ the thing it loves. The object is to attain that enormous _energy of greatness_ which can model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which can yet avoid _going to ruin_ at the sight of the suffering _created_ thereby, the like of which has never been seen before. The revolution, confusion, and distress of whole peoples is in my opinion of less importance than _the misfortunes which attend great individuals in their development._ We must not allow ourselves to be deceived: the many misfortunes of all these small folk do not together constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of _mighty_ men.--To think of one's self in moments of great danger, and to draw ones own advantage from the calamities of thousands in the case of the man who differs very much from the common ruck--may be a sign of a great character which is able to master its feeling of pity and justice.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.