"The best generals I have known were... stupid……" — Leo Tolstoy

"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."

— Leo Tolstoy

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685 Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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More Absence Quotes

This quote is filed under Absence Quotes, one of 1,418 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

Every one knows, that the mind will not be kept from contemplating what it loves in the midst of crowds… — Mary Astell
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? — Saint Augustine
Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes… — Hans Urs von Balthasar
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself. — Henry Adams
I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me… — Brendan Behan
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. — Ambrose Bierce
Life has become the ideology of its own absence. — Theodor Adorno
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent… — Elizabeth Bowen
Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will… — David Bowie
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates. — Jean de la Bruyere
Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like… — Bill Bryson
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought. — Samuel Butler

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