The drive to excellence, a human strategy, aphorism 440
440
The drive to excellence is an overcompensation for an unfathomable deficit — just as could be the meanness in us. We hold out before us a counterweight, some sort of ballast, without which we would fall over. It matters little which of the two we hold out: great or mean, we balance just the same. Yet because it matters little, and because we must hold something, why meanness?