Leadership Quote by Ulysses S. Grant

Grant frames fate the way a working general-turned-president would: not as mysticism, but as a private ritual that keeps the machinery of decision moving. The line is almost comically plainspoken, then it snaps into something sharper. His “superstition” isn’t about omens or charms; it’s a rule of narrative. Once he begins, the job is already “accomplished.” That’s not credulity. It’s self-command.

The intent is practical. Grant is describing a mental posture that converts uncertainty into obligation. Start the march, and you’ve implicitly accepted the outcome. In a world where hesitation kills campaigns and ruins presidencies, this is a psychological shortcut: act first, argue with doubt later. He’s giving you a peek at the internal discipline that made him effective in war and, at least in temperament, unusually steady in office.

The subtext is also reputational. Grant was often caricatured as blunt, even passive, a man things “happened” around. This sentence quietly rewrites that. He’s confessing to a superstition, but the superstition is a form of willpower that sounds like destiny. It turns contingency into momentum, luck into logistics.

Context matters: Grant lived through a century obsessed with providence and moral fate, yet he talks like an engineer. The irony is that his “superstition” is basically modern performance psychology. Believe the outcome is settled, and you reduce the psychic drag that keeps most people from finishing what they start.