There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
 G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905). copy citation

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Author G. K. Chesterton
Source Heretics
Topic success failure immediacy
Date 1905
Language English
Reference
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Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/470/470-h/470-h.htm

Context

“A man who is perpetually thinking of whether this race or that race is strong, of whether this cause or that cause is promising, is the man who will never believe in anything long enough to make it succeed. The opportunist politician is like a man who should abandon billiards because he was beaten at billiards, and abandon golf because he was beaten at golf. There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
And having discovered that opportunism does fail, I have been induced to look at it more largely, and in consequence to see that it must fail. I perceive that it is far more practical to begin at the beginning and discuss theories.” source

Meaning and analysis

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