The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

Attributed to Otto von Bismarck, the line contrasts action with narration: the statesman’s priority is to shape events rather than to record or justify them afterward. Read in light of Bismarck’s reputation as a practitioner of Realpolitik, it implies that power, outcomes, and decisive intervention matter more than memoirs, rhetoric, or the cultivation of one’s legacy. It can also be taken as a skeptical comment on historical writing itself—suggesting that those who act are rarely the same people who later control the story, and that the “main thing” for political leaders is effectiveness in the moment, not authorship of the official account.