When Asses Are Needed

"You will never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until you ride into town on an ass."

The phrase

Language	Form
German	Wann Esel not tun. — Man wird die Menge nicht eher zum Hosianna-rufen bringen, bis man auf einem Esel in die Stadt einreitet.
English (Hollingdale)	When asses are needed. — You will never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until you ride into town on an ass.
Literal	"When asses are needed. — One will not get the crowd to cry Hosanna until one rides into the town on an ass."

Origin

The line is aphorism §313 of Friedrich Nietzsche's Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (Assorted Opinions and Maxims), 1879 — the first part of the second volume of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human). Its German heading is Wann Esel not tun, "When asses are needed." The familiar English wording comes from R. J. Hollingdale's translation.

This is Nietzsche's "aphoristic" middle period, where he writes in short, dry, self-contained observations rather than building systems. Many of them — like this one — are deadpan jokes with a serious mechanism underneath.

What it actually means

The whole sentence is built on a single biblical reference, and if you don't catch it the line is opaque. Decoded:

"Cry Hosanna" — On Palm Sunday, the Gospels describe Jesus entering Jerusalem to a crowd that throws down cloaks and palm branches and shouts "Hosanna!" (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 12). Hosanna is a Hebrew acclamation — it originally meant "save us," but had hardened into a pure shout of praise. So "to cry Hosanna" = to greet someone with mass adoration.
"Ride into town on an ass" — In that same scene, Jesus arrives not on a war-horse but on a donkey — a deliberately humble mount, chosen to fulfil the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 ("your king comes to you... humble, and mounted on a donkey"). So riding in on an ass = the public gesture of humility.

Put the two halves back together and the plain meaning is: the crowd will not worship you until you perform humility for them. You don't win mass adulation by showing up powerful, rich, or magnificent. You win it with the staged, recognizable image of lowliness — the borrowed donkey, the modest entrance, the role the audience already knows how to cheer.

Nietzsche's title twists the knife. "When asses are needed" puns on the donkey: to be carried into town on the crowd's love, you need the ass — the prop, the act, and (he implies) a willingness to look like one. His opinion of die Menge, "the crowd," is consistently low: it cannot recognize greatness directly, only the familiar script. So acclaim is theatre, and the price of admission is self-abasement.

The paradox

It runs on an inversion you have to do a double-take on:

Triumph requires humility — but as technique, not virtue. The donkey is usually read as genuine meekness. Nietzsche reads it as stagecraft: the most reliable route to being exalted by a crowd is to appear to lower yourself. Grandeur repels the mob; performed modesty draws it in.
The worshippers are the marks. The crowd believes it is honouring humility. It is actually responding to a cue. That gap — between what the audience thinks it admires and what is actually moving it — is the real subject of the aphorism.

In practice

A useful, slightly cynical check on how popular approval gets manufactured:

When a powerful figure stages humility. The billionaire in the plain T-shirt, the politician at the diner, the CEO who's "just one of the team." Ask whether the modesty is the message — i.e. whether you are watching the donkey.
When you find a crowd adoring someone. Separate "what are they cheering" from "what cued the cheer." Often the second is a gesture of lowliness that flatters the audience into feeling it discovered the virtue all by itself.