“The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, they do not see and do not follow him, and any literary freebooter who chooses may shoot him with impunity.”

— Georg Brandes

Ferdinand Lassalle (1881)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, the…" by Georg Brandes?

Georg Brandes 40

Danish literature critic and scholar 1842–1927

Related quotes

“Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Comment on establishing the University of Virginia, in a letter to Thomas Cooper (7 October 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) edited by Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol VII, p. 200 http://books.google.com/books?id=jrSgJGp-B64C&pg=RA1-PA200&dq=%22A+professorship+of+theology+should+have+no+place+in+our+institution%22&ei=u65FR562EpqCpwLkk9XxBg
1810s
Context: I agree … that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.

“There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 542.

“Dostoyevsky is ahead of his time - a few daring steps. You follow him, dizzying, fearful, incredulous; but you follow. He won't let loose, you have to follow. … You simply have to call him unique. He comes from nowhere and belongs nowhere. And yet he is always a Russian.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Dostojewski ist seiner Zeit noch um ein paar gewagte Schritte voraus. Man folgt ihm schwindelnd, bange, ungläubig; aber man folgt. Er lässt nicht locker, man muss folgen. … Man muss ihn einfach als Unikum nehmen. Er kommt von nirgendwo und gehört nirgendwo hin. Und dabei bleibt er doch stets Russe.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)