Simon Sebag Montefiore said this quote

“ Greatness needs courage (above all) and willpower, charisma, intelligence and creativity but it also demands characteristics that we often associate with the least admirable people: reckless risk-taking, brutal determination, sexual thrill-seeking, brazen showmanship, obsession close to fixation and something approaching insanity. In other words, the qualities required for greatness and wickedness, for heroism and monstrosity are not too far distant from each other. The Norwegians alone have a word for this: stormannsgalskap – the madness of great men. ”

Famous Quotes of Simon Sebag Montefiore

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But to her, libraries were like hotels: secret villages inhabited by passing strangers from a thousand different worlds brought together just for a few hours.

~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Who is fit to be elected?' asked Napoleon. 'A Caesar, an Alexander only comes along once a century, so that election must be a matter of chance.

~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Power is always personal: any study of a Western democratic leader today reveals that, even in a transparent system with its short periods in office, personalities shape administrations. Democratic leaders often rule through trusted retainers instead of official ministers. In any court, power is as fluid as human personality.

~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Very few politicians, who have chosen a political career, can fulfill the aspirations and survive the strains of an elevated office that in a monarchy was filled so randomly. Each tsar had to be simultaneously dictator and supreme general, high priest and Little Father. They required all the qualities listed by the sociologist Max Weber: the personal gift of grace, the virtue of legality, and the authority of the eternal yesterday.

~ Simon Sebag Montefiore