Quotes About Defeat

Since critics found it hard to defeat him on intellectual grounds, they stooped to personal attacks.

Frederick Douglass, who had entertained hopes for the Haitian post, graciously conceded defeat. "Your appointment," he told Bassett, "is a grand achievement for yourself and for our whole people.

John Adams summed up the case succinctly: "In general, our generals have been outgeneralled.

Far sooner than Rockefeller, the railroads had foreseen the political reaction and inevitable defeat.

Tens of thousands of onlookers gaped in amazement as the shattered British troops marched out of Yorktown and, to the tune of an old English ballad, "The World Turned Upside Down

May 1780, he had fresh cause to meditate on the failings of Congress when news came of a calamitous defeat: the British had taken Charleston, capturing an American garrison of 5,400 soldiers, including John Laurens. The year 1780 was to be a dismal one for the patriots.

Sixteenth-century litigation combined the qualities of tedium, hardship, brutality, and injustice that tested character and endurance, with the element of pure chance that appealed to the gambler, the fear of defeat and ruin, and the hope of victory and humiliation of the enemy. It had everything that war can offer except the delights of shedding blood.

We're going to beat you so hard your kids will be born dizzy.

Hopeless is hopeless, and don't ever pretend it ain't

The hardcover book was an academic monograph from a Midwestern university about the Battle of Kursk. Kursk happened in July of 1943. It was Nazi Germany's last grand offensive of World War Two and its first major defeat on an open battlefield. It turned into the greatest tank battle the world has ever seen, and ever will see, unless people like Kramer himself are eventually turned loose.

Wrong place," Reacher said. "Wrong time, wrong reasons, wrong methods, wrong approach, wrong leadership. No real backing, no real will to win, no coherent strategy.

Zec back toward the living room. The kettle's whistle died away, like an air raid siren winding down. The house went quiet again. "It's over," Reacher said. "You lost." "It's never over," the Zec replied. Hoarse voice

Shrago stayed on his feet for a long second, and then his knees got the message that the lights were out upstairs, and he went down in a vertical heap, like he had jumped off a wall.

T]he more one reads Thucydides, the less one feels that Athens's suffering was fitting or deserved. And, more generally, our first response to the book as a whole is not satisfaction at justice having been done, but is far more likely to be a feeling of sadness. This sadness arises, in large measure at least, from a growing sense that the defeat of Athens is not the victory of justice, but that justice itself is among the chief victims of the war.

Yet it is hard to celebrate Athens's defeat in the Sicilian campaign, even though this was the most memorable and in some ways the noblest of Athens's failures; and one cannot help but feel that here, at least, the pursuit of imperial glory was ill advised and not worth its terrible price. For not only do we feel the greatness of the army's sufferings, but also we see an ugliness in Athens that comes to light as being the cause of its defeat.

Michael Jordan once said, "I've missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I've lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

One! two! and through and through The vorpal blade went snickersnack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

The world is full of dead optimists.

No matter how much damage he had done, he hadn't won.

I think the central theme about black society is that it has got elements of a defeated society

Bent out of shape from society's pliers, cares not to come up any higher, but rather get you down in the hole that he's in.

Your spiritual sense will make you either a winner or a loser.

If we dare to win, we should also dare to lose

Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.