A Counter-Nietzschean View

Here's a guy who takes a somewhat less than Nietzschean view of his achievements:

Have I not been employed in mischief all my days? Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the calamaities and desolations to the human race and the whole globe ever since?

But the feeling passes:

I meant well, however. My conscience was clear as a crystal glass, without a scruple or doubt. I was borne along by an irresistible sense of duty. God prospered our labors; and, awful, dreadful and deplorable as the consequences have been, I cannot but hope that the ultimate good of the world, of the human race, and of our beloved country, is intended and will be accomplished by it.

--John Adams, to Benjamin Rush, Aug. 28, 1811
Excerpted in The American Enlightenment 211 (A. Koch ed. 1965)