Friedrich Nietzsche
The Chosen People
The Jews, who regard themselves as the chosen people among the nations, and that too because they are the moral genius among the nations (in virtue of their capacity for despising the human in themselves more than any other people) the Jews have a pleasure in their divine monarch and saint similar to that which the French nobility had in Louis XIV. This nobility had allowed its power and autocracy to be taken from it, and had become contemptible: in order not to feel this, in order to be able to forget it, an un equalled royal magnificence, royal authority and plenitude of power was needed, to which there was access only for the nobility. As in accordance with this privilege they raised themselves to the elevation of the court, and from that elevation saw everything under them, saw everything contemptible, they got beyond all uneasiness of con science. They thus elevated intentionally the tower of the royal power more and more into the clouds, and set the final coping stone of their own power thereon.