The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes -- love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.
More Quotes from Leo Tolstoy:
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.Leo Tolstoy
A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth -- science -- which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
Leo Tolstoy
He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.
Leo Tolstoy
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo Tolstoy
If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.
Leo Tolstoy
We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
Leo Tolstoy
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Based on Topics: Courage Quotes, Doubt & Skepticism Quotes, God Quotes, Leadership Quotes, Leading & Managing Quotes, Literature Quotes, Love Quotes, Man Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Stupidity QuotesBased on Keywords: absent-minded, inquiring
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