Wisdom solitude

November 14th, 2012

11

Why Being A Loner Makes You A Great Leader

By

Great leaders think, and thinking requires solitude. That’s the message given to the graduating class of West Point. Some more quotes:

Solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership.

[...]

We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going.

[...]

Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it.

With technology enveloping us all, especially the younger generation, will it soon be possible to create an original thought not tied to the content we’re consuming?

Read The Entire Speech at The American Scholar (HT: Danger & Play)



About the Author

has been blogging for several years over at RooshV.com about travel and women. He has also authored books on how to get laid in the United States, South America, and Eastern Europe. He launched Return Of Kings in October of 2012 to serve the needs of masculine men.

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  • playmuc

    This is a fantastic text. I’ve read it twice before.
    Also he mentions David P:

    “Look at the most successful, most acclaimed, and perhaps the finest soldier of his generation, General David Petraeus. He’s one of those rare people who rises through a bureaucracy for the right reasons. He is a thinker. He is an intellectual. ”

    Well, he also has a penis. ;)

  • Odds

    Let us not forget that Adolf Hitler spent his early 20s a homeless and penniless artist and day laborer on the streets of Vienna before WWI. He spent his days debating Marxists and slept in a homeless shelter at night. And he evolved into one of Europe’s most charismatic leaders.

    How can you possibly learn to rely on yourself if you don’t spend time with yourself and develop your own decision making skills?

  • Wolfie

    It seems strange that being an introvert, or having certain introverted qualities, would make you a better leader, but it’s been seen over and over throughout history.

  • Stoictroy

    I have noticed that loners and shy people in general are infinitely better at gauging peoples feelings. If they break out of their loner habit they tend to be much more charismatic then attention whores who think the world revolves around them.

  • Luke in the Sky with Diamonds

    The thing is once you spent enough time alone you lose interest in “leading” other people. Leading people is for extraverts, not introverts.

    • Sitaram Goel Shah

      Yeah, the loner is a sage. The leader is a king, an extravert, a people person. What do you want a return of? Kings or sages?

      • Markus

        We need both. Kings leading with vision, sages counseling with knowledge and wisdom.

    • Jeff Winger

      I believe that is the sole reason that they are such great leaders. They aren’t interested in what other people think and are thus able to make the hard decisions. The current leaders of the USA don’t seem interested in making the hard decisions, just the easy ones that get them more money.

  • rolando guerra

    this is gold I have a battalion board coming up soon and I should totally try to remember this speech and use bits of it to try and explain my slightly introverted nature and how it can actually be very helpful in military leadership.

  • Quintus Curtius

    If you wish to lead men, you must be prepared to turn your back on them.

  • Richard W1

    thanks for this article…. i went to boarding school and in the holidays, ended up on my own alot of the time, having lost touch with friends in my home town….. it was a bummer at 13 but by 16 I was going off to concerts on my own, and now frankly if given the choice i just want to be on my own. it’s so much more interesting to live in the present moment, than babble like a monkey in a large group of friends.

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