One need not accept all that Tolstoy says — some of his facts are not accurately stated — to realize the central truth of his indictment of the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us of evil passions. There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practice what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity.

South Africa never had a reading culture and yet, throughout its history, some books have had great power they found their way into the right hands. Mandela was not an intellectual reader, reading for the sake of reading, but he found books useful. He found novels useful. As President he would stop his driver so that he could buy some novel at the bookshop. "One book that I returned to many times was Tolstoy's great work, War and Peace," he wrote. "I was particularly taken with the portrait of General Kutuzov, whom everyone at the Russian court underestimated." For Mandela, Kutuzov "made his decisions on a visceral understanding of his men and his people." He was prepared to sacrifice the city of Moscow when it became necessary. Mandela even compared Kutuzov with King Shaka, who was also uninterested in making a stand to defend mere buildings. ... On the face of it, Kutuzov is a surprising choice for Mandela's admiration. Even for Tolstoy, "this simple, modest, and therefore truly majestic figure could not fit into that false form of the European hero, the imaginary ruler of the people, which history has invented." Thanks to his capacity of acceptance, and in accordance with the biological needs of life within him, Kutuzov irresponsibly dozes through a council of war on the eve of battle. He despises "both knowledge and intelligence. . . . He despised them with his old age, with his experience of life." Despite the war, he remains embedded in ordinary pursuits which are, nevertheless, incidental: "All the rest was for him only the habitual acting out of life. His conversations with the staff, his letters to Mme de Staël, which he wrote from Tarutino, his reading of novels, distribution of rewards, correspondence with Petersburg, and so on, were the same habitual acting out of and submission to life." Key for Mandela was the strategy of retirement and passivity that Tolstoy's Kutuzov applied so thoroughly as to surrender to the overwhelming force of collective and unplanned life. He saw that "circumstances are sometimes stronger than we are," resembling Lincoln, who accepted that "events have controlled me." His principal weapons were not military. "'Patience and time, these are my mighty warriors!' thought Kutuzov," who "used all his powers to keep the Russian army from useless battles."

If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

The slow progress towards juster international relations may be traced to the distinguished jurist of the Netherlands, Grotius; to the great German, Immanuel Kant, who lifted the subject of “Eternal Peace’ high above controversy; to Count Tolstoy of Russia, who so trenchantly set it forth in our own day, and so on throughout the nations.

If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.

If you want to be happy, be.

What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! The Jew — is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.

People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.

Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?