Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves.
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money—these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness—as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.—and ofttimes also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters.
What the critics said
Brandes restates Zarathustra's teaching that the State is the coldest of monsters whose lie is that it is the people, whereas creators made peoples; the State is for the many-too-many, and only where it ceases does the man who is a bridge to the Superman begin.
Brandes restates Zarathustra's teaching that the State is the coldest of monsters whose lie is that it is the people, whereas creators made peoples; the State is for the many-too-many, and only where it ceases does the man who is a bridge to the Superman begin.