Leadership and Victory

* Leadership in an amoral world requires more pragmatism, less ideology and no sense of decency or humanity.

* The only thing an amoral leadership can accomplish is to reproduce itself. Meanwhile, the path carved by moral leadership can have many pitfalls, but the few milestones reached along the way make all the difference.

* Real Realists are not simply disillusioned idealists; they are self-loathing ones set on destroying the very ideals which they once upheld as well as the very people and events that remind them of them.

* The worst conspirators are the ones who conspire against themselves first and foremost. Yet, they are these conspiracies against one’s own interests that often prove the most successful. People, then, are better at conspiring against themselves than against others.

* A casual observer becomes an active participant after a certain period of in indeterminable length has elapsed, even if they continued to refrain from action. For this reason, those who do not want to participate in something should not observe it, not even casually. For observation is essentially participation.

* Hubris tends to fry the brains it infects, and to silence the consciences it so gently caresses. Hubris is how all victories end. This is why the wise avoid seeking victory, and opt for the establishment of a new balance between their competing interests.