Inspirational Maleficent Quotes

There is a sort of maleficence in history: it solicits men, tempts them so that they believe they are moving in its direction, and then suddenly it unmasks, and events change and prove that there was another possibility. The men whom history abandons in this way and who see themselves simply as accomplices suddenly find themselves the instigators of a crime to which history has inspired them. And they are unable to look for excuses or to excuse themselves from even a part of the responsibility.

Many years ago I confronted a political activist whose inordinate desire for power was suddenly exposed. Instead of covering up and denying, he said to me: “I do not want to be an insect, like my father.” This shocking admission is something that Nietzsche, as the psychologist of the “will to power,” addressed with the following lines: What the father has hid comes out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father’s revealed secret. Inspired ones they resemble; but it is not the heart that inspires them — but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that makes them so. Their jealously leads them also into thinker’s paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy — they always go too far: so that their fatigue has at last to go to sleep on the snow. In all their lamentations sounds vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seems to them bliss.