Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. LawrenceRead
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Most strategies in leadership are predictable, but true skill lies in handling the unpredictable elements.
This quote by T. E. Lawrence highlights the distinction between the knowledge that can be learned from books and the elusive, instinctual aspects of leadership. While a significant portion of effective tactics can be systematized and taught, the true mark of a great leader is their ability to navigate the unpredictable and to respond effectively to unforeseen challenges, akin to the fleeting presence of a kingfisher in flight.
Themes
TacticsLeadershipInstinctStrategySkill
In practice
Example use cases
During a leadership seminar to emphasize the importance of adaptability.
More from T. E. Lawrence
All quotes βAll the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
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In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.
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The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
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Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.
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We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.
T. E. LawrenceRead
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