…slowly and gropingly I found what makes you a slave: You are your own slave driver. Nobody else – nobody except yourself carries the responsibility for your slavery. . . I have ceased to be willing to die for your freedom to be anybody’s slave. I tell you: Only you yourself can be your liberator!
The truly great man takes your freedom deadly seriously. In order to establish it in a practical way, he has to surround himself with many little men, helpers and errand boys, because he cannot do the gigantic job by himself. Furthermore, you would not understand him, and would let him fall by the wayside, if he had not surrounded himself with little great persons. Surrounded by many little great persons, he conquers power for you, or a piece of the truth, or a new, better belief.
He writes gospels, freedom laws, etc., and counts on your help and seriousness. He pulls you out of your social morass. In order to keep together the many little great persons, in order not to lose your confidence, the truly great man has to sacrifice piece after piece of his greatness, which he was able to attain only in the deepest intellectual loneliness, far from you and your everyday noise, and yet in close contact with your life. In order to be able to lead you he has to tolerate your transforming him into an inaccessible God. You would have no confidence in him if he had remained the simple man that he was. . .
In this way, you yourself produce your new master. Promoted to the role of new master, the great man loses his greatness because this greatness consisted in his straightforwardness, simplicity, courage, and real contact with life….
…Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden, they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed…