Our value judgements. -- All actions proceed from value judgements, all value judgements are either our own or accepted—the latter are by far the majority. Why do we accept them? Out of fear—that is: we consider it wiser to pretend that they have been our own as well—and we get used to this pretence, so that it eventually becomes our nature. Our own value judgement: that means measuring a thing on the basis of how much it pleases or displeases just us and nobody else—something exceedingly rare! But our judgement of another, that in which lies the reason why we so often rely on his judgement, should that at least come from us, be our own judgement? Yes, but we do this as children and rarely learn again in a different way; for our whole life, moreover, we are the fools of judgments to which we got used as children, if one considers the way we judge our neighbour (his spirit, his rank, his morality, his exemplarity, his loathsomeness) and hold it necessary to bow before his value judgements.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Daybreak”