Leo Goodwin Quotes

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together. We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' (748)

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.” Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock….His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.” “I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.” The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.” Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. “Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together. “We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar or Washington is only moonlight by the sun of Lincoln. His example is universal and will last thousands of years. . . . He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together . . . and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives.” —Leo Tolstoy, The World, New York, 1909

Only people who are capable of loving strongly,” Leo Tolstoy wrote, “can also suffer great sorrow; but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them.

The “chemical imbalance” theory of depression, for example, also known as the catecholamine, monoamine, or serotonin deficiency hypothesis, was based on the chemical action of the first generation of antidepressants, which were discovered serendipitously and found to act on monoamine pathways to increase monoamine concentrations (López‐Muñoz & Alamo, 2009). We now know that the “chemical imbalance” hypothesis of depression is false. First, the fact that drugs that increase monoamine concentrations also reduce depressive symptoms (O'Donnell, 2011) is not strong evidence that depression is caused by a deficiency of monoamines. Aspirin reduces headache symptoms but headaches are not caused by an aspirin deficiency. Second, antidepressant drugs increase monoamine concentrations almost immediately (within minutes), but their antidepressant effects only appear after a few weeks (Frazer & Benmansour, 2002; Harmer, Goodwin, & Cowen, 2009). Third, other drugs, such as cocaine, increase monoamines (Kalsner & Nickerson, 1969; Kuhar, Ritz, & Boja, 1991) but are not effective antidepressants. Fourth, some antidepressant drugs, such as tianeptine, decrease monoamines (Baune & Renger, 2014; McEwen et al., 2010). Fifth, depletion of monoamines does not induce depression in non‐depressed individuals (Ruhé, Mason, & Schene, 2007). In summary, although monoamines might play some role in depression, there is no evidence that depression is caused by a simple imbalance of serotonin, norepinephrine, or any other neurotransmitter or biochemical (Kendler, 2008; Lacasse & Leo, 2015, and references therein).