Quote by Leo Tolstoy: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

It is easy to point at big problems and demand the world be different. But real transformation starts inside a single person. If everyone focused on improving themselves first, the world would actually change as a result.

Russia at the turn of the twentieth century was convulsed by calls for revolutionary change. Radical political movements were growing in the cities while the peasantry remained in poverty. Tolstoy, increasingly drawn to moral philosophy, published a series of essays arguing that inner transformation was the only honest starting point for social change.

Russian novelist and moral philosopher regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time. His epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina explored the full range of human experience in nineteenth-century Russia. In his later years he became a committed Christian anarchist and social reformer.