Galeazzo Ciano (1946) The Ciano Diaries, 1939-1943. Milan: Rizzoli. p. 594; Original cited in: Emerging Infectious diseases. Vol 2, Nr 1, Jan.-March 1996. p. 61
Original: Come sempre, la vittoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l'insuccesso.
“Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.”
State Department press conference (21 April 1961), following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, as quoted in A Thousand Days : John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965, 2002 edition), by Arthur Schlesinger, p. 262; also in The Quote Verifier (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 234 http://books.google.com/books?id=McO2Co4Ih98C&pg=PA234). The exact wording used by Kennedy (a hundred, not a thousand) had appeared in the 1951 film The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, as reported in Safire's New Political Dictionary (1993) by William Safire, pp 841–842). The earliest known occurrence is Galeazzo Ciano, Diary 1937-1943, entry for 9 September 1942 ("La victoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l'insuccesso."), but the earliest known occurrence on such a theme is in Tacitus's : Agricola Book 1 ab paragraph 27 http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/tac/ag01020.htm: “Iniquissima haec bellorum condicio est: prospera omnes sibi vindicant, adversa uni imputantur.” (It is the singularly unfair peculiarity of war that the credit of success is claimed by all, while a disaster is attributed to one alone.)
1961
“Anyone can deal with victory. Only the mighty can bear defeat.”
“Never plan for victory and defeat in your mind at the same time.”
p 189
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)
“To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat.”
(Late 1920s or the 1930s) Zbigniew Brzezinski in his introduction to Wacław Jędrzejewicz’s Piłsudski: A Life For Poland. Quoted from this website http://members.lycos.co.uk/jozefpilsudski/index2.html
Attributed
“Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat.”
The Second World War, Volume IV : The Hinge of Fate (1951) Chapter 33 (The Battle of Alamein)
BBC News story on the 60th anniversary of Alamein http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2347801.stm.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
TVGuide.com, February 19, 2000 http://web.archive.org/20011114053556/www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,8955,00.html
Eric Chu (2015) cited in " Baseball inspires hope for last-minute victories: Chu http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2015/10/28/2003631117" on Taipei Times, 28 October 2015.
UFC 178 post-event press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAAC34JzxS0 (September 2014), Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC
2010s, 2014
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
