12.3.26

Prudence of free spirits


The liberal minded men who live for the sake of knowledge alone, will find they soon attain the external goal of their life, their definitive position in relation to society and the state, and will easily be content with, for example, a minor office or an income that just enables them to live; for they will organize their life in such a way that a great transformation of external circumstances even on overturning of the political order, does not overturn their life with it. Upon all these things they expend as little energy as possible, so that they may dive down into the element of knowledge with all their accumulated strength and as it were with a deep breath. Thus they may hope to dive deep and perhaps get a view of the ground at the bottom. Of whatever happens to him such a spirit will want to appropriate only the tip; he has no love for things in their entirety, in all the breathe and prolixity of their convolutions, for he has no wish to get himself entangled with them.

Friedrich Nietzsche
1844 - 1900