Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty, light, and false. Here and there one encounters an impassioned and exaggerated worship of "pure forms," among both philosophers and artists: let nobody doubt that whoever stands in that much need of the cult of surfaces must at some time have reached beneath them with disastrous results. (59: 71)

Let us look more closely: what is the scientific man? To begin with, a type of man that is not noble, with the virtues of a type of man that is not noble, which is to say, a type that does not dominate and is neither authoritative nor self-sufficient: he has industriousness, patient acceptance of his place in rank and file, evenness and moderation in his abilities and needs, an instinct for his equals and what they need; for example, that bit of independence and green pasture without which there is no quiet work, that claim to honor and recognition ... that sunshine of a good name, that constant attestation of his value and utility which is needed to overcome again and again the internal mistrust which is the sediment in the hearts of all dependent men and herd animals. (206: 125)

(Trans. Walter Kaufmann. NY: Vintage, 1989)