Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Germany
15 Oct 1844 // 25 Aug 1900
Philosopher

Life is Will to Power

To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is: namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentialy appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation; - but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?
Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal - it takes place in every healthy aristocracy - must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy - not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in 'Beyond Good and Evil'
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