Friedrich Nietzsche, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The slave revolt in morality — that is the subject, and everything else in the book is commentary on it.1 Noble morality begins from within: a triumphant affirmation of itself, a spontaneous overflow of strength that only afterwards, and almost as an afterthought, generates its negative concept of "the low," "the common," "the bad." The noble type acts first; it does not need an enemy in order to know what it is.1
Slave morality, by contrast, begins with a No — directed outward, at what is "different," at what is "not itself." It is, physiologically speaking, a reactive type: it requires external stimuli in order to act at all, and its action is fundamentally reaction.1 This reactive No, when it cannot discharge itself in deeds, turns inward and festers.
That is ressentiment (reactive resentment) — the creative poison of the impotent, the imaginary revenge of those who cannot take real revenge.1 The man of ressentiment does not live in trust and openness with himself; his soul squints, he loves hiding places and secret paths, he knows how to wait, how not to forget, how to be provisionally humble while the hatred accumulates.2
The historical instantiation I trace most carefully is the Jewish priestly inversion: the audacious act of hanging a new value-equation on the old aristocratic one, so that "the wretched alone are the good," the powerful alone are evil, the suffering alone are blessed by God.3 That revaluation, carried forward and universalized by Christianity, has been the dominant moral tradition of the West for two thousand years — and we no longer see it clearly precisely because it has been victorious.3
Beneath the moral vocabulary — "good," "evil," "sin," "pity," "conscience" — I am asking what type of life speaks. And the answer the book gives is this: what calls itself morality is often weakness seeking to justify itself through interpretation rather than overcome itself through strength.4 The error in treatment is always the same: one does not fight weakness with a systeme fortifiant but with moralization — with a new name for the sickness that makes it feel like health.4
The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is 'outside,' what is 'different,' what is 'not itself'; and this No is its creative deed.On the Genealogy of Morals, pp. 44–45
While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself, the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naive nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble.On the Genealogy of Morals, pp. 45–46
It was the Jews who, with awe-inspiring consistency, dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God) and to hang on to this inversion with their teeth, the teeth of the most abysmal hatred (the hatred of impotence), saying 'the wretched alone are the good'... One knows who inherited this Jewish revaluation... with the Jews there begins the slave revolt in morality: that revolt which has a history of two thousand years behind it and which we no longer see because it has been victorious.On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 42
The error in treatment: one does not want to fight weakness with a systeme fortifiant, but rather with a kind of justification and moralization; i.e., with an interpretation.The Will to Power, pp. 29–30