“For what gives my work its peculiar quality, and what is most remarkable in the present age, is this. Fortune has guided almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has forced them to incline towards one and the same end; a historian should likewise bring before his readers under one synoptical view the operations by which she has accomplished her general purpose.”

—  Polybius , book The Histories

The Histories

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For what gives my work its peculiar quality, and what is most remarkable in the present age, is this. Fortune has guide…" by Polybius?
Polybius photo
Polybius 15
ancient Greek historian -208–-126 BC

Related quotes

Alexandra Kollontai photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Context: It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means. In a storm at sea no one on board can wish the ship to sink, and yet not unfrequently all go down together because too many will direct and no single mind can be allowed to control.

Robert Fisk photo

“The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves.”

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter VIII : The Machine Begins To Self-Destruct, p. 189-190

Raymond Kethledge photo
Robert Silverberg photo

“Autobiography. Apparently one should not name the names of those one has been to bed with, or give explicit figures on the amount of money one has earned, those being the two data most eagerly sought by readers; all the rest is legitimate to reveal.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

"Sounding Brass, Tinkling Cymbal" in Hell's Cartographers (1975) edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison

T.S. Eliot photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo

Related topics