“Nothing is so discouraging to subordinates as a chief who hesitates. "Firmness," said Napoleon, "prevails in all things."”
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership
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André Maurois 202
French writer 1885–1967Related quotes
“Nothing discourages a child so much as the impossibility of pleasing.”
Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
Context: A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
“If Napoleon had nuclear subs, we’d all be speaking French. So, the history thing can be oversold.”
2010s, 2018, Interview with Bill Kristol (2018)
Source: Castle Series, House of Many Ways (2008), p. 57.
1999 edition, p. 661
A People's History of the United States (1980)
Context: There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.
But there is also the bubbling of change under the surface of obedience: the growing revulsion against endless wars, the insistence of women all over the world that they will no longer tolerate abuse and subordination… There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color.
Quoted in Shall We Slay to Eat? https://books.google.it/books?id=WNQvAQAAMAAJ by John Harvey Kellogg, Good Health Publishing Company, 1899, p. 124.
Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 4: 1921
Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 2: Leaders and Followers