Success Quote by Peter Marshall

Moral math rarely flatters the short term, and Peter Marshall is betting that a life - and a society - should be judged on the direction it’s pushing history, not on the day’s scoreboard. The line is built like a sermon but paced like a rallying cry: it flips the usual American obsession with winning into a spiritual litmus test. Failure, typically a mark of incompetence, becomes honorable if it’s incurred in the service of something destined to outlast you. Success, typically proof of merit, becomes suspect if it props up a project with an expiration date.

The intent is pastoral and tactical at once. As a clergyman who preached during the turbulence of the Depression and World War II, Marshall is speaking to people asked to sacrifice with no guarantee of payoff. The subtext: you may not live to see the victory, and that has to be emotionally survivable. He’s offering a theology of delayed gratification, where fidelity matters more than visible results.

The phrase "ultimately" does the heavy lifting - and smuggles in the risk. It assumes we can discern which causes are aligned with the arc of justice, providence, or historical necessity. That’s comforting in a pulpit, dangerous in politics: every movement likes to imagine it’s the one that history will vindicate.

Still, the quote works because it dignifies unglamorous struggle. It gives people permission to lose without being defeated, and it warns that some wins are just well-decorated dead ends.