In reality, purely individual shortcomings of leading personalities are relatively rare. If one considers the senseless and uncontrollable accidents through which men obtain their positions in all fields, the fact that not a very much greater sum of incapabilities manifests itself in their occupancies would be an incomprehensible miracle, if one did not have to assume that the latent qualifications for the positions exist in very great diffusion.

XREF: Connects to the Peter Principle and selection discussions about why incompetent leaders don't accumulate despite random promotion.

Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simm…, loc. 7406