"Solitude and Leadership"

In 1841, the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson published his most profound essay, ‘Self-Reliance’. In it, he set himself the task of trying to understand where greatness comes from, in business, government, science and the arts – and his answer was touchingly close to home. Geniuses are those who know how to introspect and trust in their own

Harris is concerned that new technologies help create a culture that undermines time alone with your thoughts, noting that “it matters enormously when that resource is under attack.”18 His survey of the relevant literature then points to three crucial benefits provided by solitude: “new ideas; an understanding of the self; and closeness to others.”

The weird thing is that the word “leader” itself is cliché and boring, but when you come across somebody who actually is a real leader, that person isn’t cliché or boring at all; in fact he’s sort of the opposite of cliché and boring.

Obviously, a real leader isn’t just somebody who has ideas you agree with, nor is it just somebody you happen to be

“Somehow he managed,” Lincoln’s most thorough modern biographer has concluded, “to be strong-willed without being willful, righteous without being self-righteous, and moral without being moralistic,” thus yielding a “psychological maturity unmatched in the history of American public life.”110 Which is simply to say that he managed polarities: they