Tim FerrissThe Holy Fire of Ambition Inside Winston Churchill of Napoleon β Andrew Roberts
Tim Ferriss
Shared Military Upbringing 0:00
Napoleon and Churchill were both educated for war at military colleges, and as their commands grew, so did the number of men under them and the weight of their decisions. As young men both thought deeply about Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, developing a self-confidence, or egotism, that let them make enormous decisions.
A Kind of Holy Fire 1:03
Both men carried what is described as a holy fire, not religious since neither was devout, but a deep conviction that their actions were right, which let them order men to their deaths without losing sleep.
Reading Shaped Their Minds 2:02
Churchill, never a university student, read voraciously as a young officer in India, especially historians Gibbon and Macaulay, which shaped his writing and outlook, while Napoleon wrote his own stories and books. Both men's heavy reading isolated them somewhat from peers, and Gibbon and Macaulay turned Churchill into a Whig believing in noblesse oblige, the duty of the privileged to serve the common good.
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