The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
967.
Would one not be justified in reckoning all great men among the _wicked?_ This is not so easy to demonstrate in the case of individuals. They are so frequently capable of masterly dissimulation that they very often assume the airs and forms of great virtues. Often, too, they seriously reverence virtues, and in such a way as to be passionately hard towards themselves; but as the result of cruelty. Seen from a distance such things are liable to deceive. Many, on the other hand, misunderstand themselves; not infrequently, too, a great mission will call forth great qualities, _e.g._ justice. The essential fact is: the greatest men may also perhaps have great virtues, but then they also have the opposites of these virtues. I believe that it is precisely out of the presence of these opposites and of the feelings they suscitate, that the great man arises,--for the great man is the broad arch which spans two banks lying far apart. In _great men_ we find the specific qualities of life in their highest manifestation: injustice, falsehood, exploitation. But inasmuch as their effect has always been _overwhelming,_ their essential nature has been most thoroughly misunderstood, and interpreted as goodness. The type of such an interpreter would be Carlyle.[5]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.