It was sort of implied that we are talking about modern democracies. Not the cruel faith awaiting the losers of court intrigues in Byzans.
The quote has long been attributed to baseball player/manager Leo Durocher of the Brooklyn Dodgers. To the extent that he used it to motivate the team, it was valid. According to sportswriter Frank Graham, this is actually what he said:
“Nice guys! Look over there. Do you know a nicer guy than Mel Ott? Or any of the other Giants? Why, they’re the nicest guys in the world! And where are they? In seventh place! Nice guys! I’m not a nice guy – and I’m in first place. The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.” It turns out to apply more broadly, as you have probably noticed. In modern democracies the validity of the statement probably tracks well with HDI or PPP, being more valid in, say, Greece and Spain, and less valid in Norway and the US. The world's richest man, for example, is a Mexican named Carlos Helu. Is he a nice guy? To those critics who point out that he amassed a fortune in a country where average per capita income does not surpass $14,500 a year, and nearly 17% of the population lives in poverty, he is a monopolist. The world's second richest man is an American named Bill Gates. Is he a nice guy? To the people whose ideas he rips off, he's a thief, but people like Bono and Gordon Brown, who follow his foundation work, he's a philanthropist.
Sometimes nice guys finish first, though. It only took Ghandi till 1947 to get rid of the British. It took Ho Chi Minh until 1954 to get rid of the French. You can always find counterexamples.
