A man born with a political vocation cannot succeed in adapting himself to normal life, and sooner or later he will fund his predestined way. As he pushes forward, everything else will become a matter of indifference to him and his vision will concentrate and focus on that single point, the sole source of his joys and sorrows. If there are any politicians who seek power so that they can carry out their ideas, as they say, or get rich, or possess women and thoroughbred horses, or for other such reasons, they are merely wretched intruders. The true political man wants power for power’s sake; all voluptuousness lies, for him, in the exercise of power. Ideas, reforms, peace, war, money, women, horses exist for him as instruments or objects of power, not the reverse…The normal man remains mediocre precisely because he can”t resist frittering himself away in many and various desires. But the man with a true vocation for power dreams only of power. He is sentenced to power; it is his obsession, his trade, his family, his pastime. Since all his faculties are concentrated on this one point, to the masses he easily appears an extraordinary man, and thus becomes a leader. In the same way, those who concentrate completely on God become saints, and those who live only for money become billionaires.
Ignazio Silone, The School For Dictators, 1938, 1963