"It is precisely political idealism that demands wars, while materialism condemns them. What a perversion of morality to wish to eliminate heroism from humanity!"—Ibid. p. 24.
[[5]] "... if we survey history in the mass, it is clear that all real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great nationalities;" and "The poet and artist must be able to react upon a great nation. When did a masterpiece ever arise among a petty little nation?"—Ibid. p. 19.
[[6]] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, son of a village pastor of Polish ancestry; born at Röcken in Saxony 1844; served in the German army for a few months in 1867; injured in mounting his horse; 1869-1879 professor of classical philology at Bale which entailed naturalisation as a Swiss subject; served in ambulance in war of 1870-1871; 1879-1889 in bad health, wrote and travelled; 1889 became insane and remained so till his death in 1900.
[[7]] "What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddlehead, Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle, real power of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy."—Beyond Good and Evil, p. 210.
"The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious."—Ibid. p. 211.
"The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still more satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and more recently as the 'Salvation Army'), a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of 'humanity' to which they can be elevated."—Ibid. p. 211.
"The European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas, is England's work and invention."—Ibid. p. 213.
[[8]] "I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which calls itself 'culture' as a misunderstanding. I do not even take the German kind into consideration.... The few instances of higher culture with which I have met in Germany were all French in their origin."—Ecce Homo, p. 27.
"Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture."—Ibid. p. 38.
"Culture and the state are antagonists: a 'culture-state' is merely a modern idea. The one lives upon the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. All great periods of culture have been periods of political decline; that which was great from the standpoint of culture was always unpolitical—even anti-political.... In the history of European culture the rise of the (German) Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the centre of gravity. Everywhere people are already aware of this: in things that really matter—and these after all constitute culture—the Germans are no longer worth considering.... The fact that there is no longer a single German philosopher worth mentioning is an increasing wonder."—The Twilight of the Idols, p. 54.