Not enough a tyrant

     He, Rotcheff, thought too much of the other man's point of view; he could always see both sides of an argument. That would not do in a world where there were Zinnovys.

    Yet Zinnovy was a Russin and they talked loudest when they faced weakness. We are basically, he thought, a race of tyrants and poets, and his own fault was in being too much the poet, too little the tyrant.

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)