
“The man who runs may fight again.”
Variant translation: The man who runs away will fight again.
Monosticha.
Speech at the Labour Party conference (5 October 1960) in opposition to a motion endorsing unilateral nuclear disarmament.
“The man who runs may fight again.”
Variant translation: The man who runs away will fight again.
Monosticha.
The Art of Poetry on a New Plan (1761), vol. ii. p. 147.
The saying "he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day" dates at least as far back as Menander (ca. 341–290 B.C.), Gnomai Monostichoi, aphorism #45: ἀνήρ ὁ ϕɛύγων καὶ ράλίν μαχήɛṯαί (a man who flees will fight again). The Attic Nights (book 17, ch. 21) of Aulus Gellius (ca. 125–180 A.D.) indicates it was already widespread in the second century: "...the orator Demosthenes sought safety in flight from the battlefield, and when he was bitterly taunted with his flight, he jestingly replied in the well-known verse: The man who runs away will fight again".
“We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.”
Con disavvantaggio grande si fa la guerra con chi non ha che perdere.
Storia d' Italia (1537-1540)
The Daily Chronicle on the 7 March 1917 https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/george-bernard-shaw-joyriding-on-the-front.
1910s, The Technique of War (1917)
Remarks by el-Sisi during a military conference (28 April 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC93fn9s3-c.
2013
Variant: Simply, all what we did is that we avoided the country a big crisis and a battle between Egyptians. Beware, instead of Egyptians fighting each other, no, you can fight us, and we protect all. how many would fight us? but Egyptians fighting each other would be a big war we couldn't have had the ability to deal with.
As quoted in Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1946) by John Hampden Jackson.
Prime Minister
“…and that we were now those guys…who started a fight at a Harry Potter book party.”
Nantucket Sucks http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/nantucket_sucks.phtml#675,
The Tucker Max Stories