I have grasped this much: if one had made the rise of great and rare men dependent upon the approval of the many (assuming that the latter knew what qualities belonged to greatness and also at whose expense all greatness evolves)—well, there would never have been a single significant man!

That the course of things makes its way independently of the approval of the great majority—that is why a few astonishing things have insinuated themselves on the earth.

From Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, New York: Vintage Books, 1968, p. 472.