Success Quote by Thucydides

Impetuous desire is the gasoline Thucydides keeps warning you not to pour on a city-state. In a single, balanced sentence, he draws the line between two political temperaments: the hot-blooded rush toward action and the slow, almost unglamorous discipline of planning. The phrasing matters. “Successful issue” is deliberately bureaucratic, a cool administrative metric that demotes passion from noble motive to unreliable method. And the structure is a quiet rebuke: “Few things...” versus “most...” turns prudence into the statistical favorite, not the inspirational underdog.

The intent isn’t self-help; it’s statecraft. Thucydides is writing in the shadow of the Peloponnesian War, where Athens repeatedly mistook confidence for competence. His history is packed with moments where speeches whip the crowd into certainty, then reality invoices them later. The subtext is that democracies (and empires) are especially vulnerable to the adrenaline of collective wanting: charismatic leaders can convert appetite into policy faster than anyone can test assumptions. Desire, in his telling, isn’t just personal; it’s contagious.

What makes the line work is its anti-heroism. It refuses the romantic myth that intensity guarantees outcomes. Calm and prudent forethought sounds dull because it is dull; that’s the point. Thucydides elevates the uncinematic virtues that prevent catastrophe, suggesting that real power isn’t the ability to act, but the ability to pause when action feels irresistible.