When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.
Jean De La BruyereRead
Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sometimes, even well-meaning individuals require the assistance of those who are less scrupulous to accomplish difficult tasks.
This quote suggests that great leaders or influential people often face challenges that may require unconventional or morally ambiguous actions. It highlights the complexity of morality and ethics in leadership, implying that certain tasks may be beyond the capacity of honest individuals due to their principles, making it necessary to sometimes enlist the help of those who operate outside conventional moral boundaries.
Themes
LeadershipMoralityEthicsChallengesCompromise
In practice
Example use cases
In a business meeting discussing strategy, one might say, 'As Jean De La Bruyere said, even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them.'
More from Jean De La Bruyere
All quotes βWe perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
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We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice
Jean De La BruyereRead
False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.
Jean De La BruyereRead
From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.
Jean De La BruyereRead
Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.
Jean De La BruyereRead
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