Trust In Fate, Rely On Your Abilities, And Keep Moving

There are times in life when we need to have blind faith in forward momentum.  We need cease the deliberations, the doubts, the equivocations, and the rationalizations.  We should, instead, resolve to maintain a steady forward pace, trusting to our own abilities and the favorable intercession of Fortune.  We may not have contingency plans for every eventuality, but we must press on with blind faith nonetheless.  Momentum creates its own dynamic, and its own outcomes.  It was precisely this principle that the great Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés brought to bear in the early stages of the conquest of Mexico in 1519.

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William H. Prescott: America’s First Great Historian

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William H. Prescott was mentioned in the preceding article here, but I felt that he merited a more extended treatment in an article devoted to him alone.  He was America’s first great historian, known for his heroic style, and for his ability to fuse a meticulous attention to original sources with a striking narrative power.

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