War and Peace (2)

Tolstoy was not that impressed by big-name leaders. They assume they are in control, but they are just being swept along by history.

In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity (War and Peace p.691).