A quotation from Orwell

It is difficult to think of any politician who has lived to be eighty and still been regarded as a success. What we call a “great” statesman normally means one who dies before his policy has had time to take effect. If Cromwell had lived a few years longer he would probably have fallen from power, in which case we should now regard him as a failure. If Pétain had died in 1930, France would have venerated him as a hero and patriot. Napoleon remarked once that if only a cannon-ball had happened to hit him when he was riding into Moscow, he would have gone down to history as the greatest man who ever lived.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1946-05), “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” Polemic Magazine

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/orwell-george/78144/

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