Ecce Homo: How to Become What You Are (World's Classics)

by Friedrich Nietzsche

My practice of war can be summed up in four propositions. First: I attack only causes that are victorious—on occasion, I wait till they are victorious. Second: I attack causes only when there are no allies to be found, when I am standing alone—when I am compromising myself alone... I have never made a move in public that was not compromising: this is my criterion for right action. Third: I never attack people—I make use of a person only as a kind of strong magnifying glass with which one can make visible some general but insidious and quite intangible exigency. This is how I attacked David Strauss,* or more precisely the success of a decrepit book among the ‘educated’ in Germany—I caught this education red-handed... This is how I attacked Wagner,* or more precisely the falsity, the instinctual indistinction of our ‘culture’, which mistakes the sophisticated for the rich, the late for the great. Fourth: I attack things only when all personal disagreement is ruled out, when there is no background of bad experiences.