Quotes about victory
page 8

Conor McGregor photo

“I am cocky in prediction, I am confident in preparation but I am always humble in victory or defeat.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

UFC 178 post-event press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAAC34JzxS0 (September 2014), Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC
2010s, 2014

Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Keshia Chante photo

“What's a victory when its hollow?”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Official Website (2009)

Sri Aurobindo photo

“O soldier and hero of God, where for thee is sorrow or shame or suffering? For thy life is a glory, thy deeds a consecration, victory thy apotheosis, defeat thy triumph.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

Jeffrey T. Kuhner photo

“The way to get the most out of a victory is to follow it with another that makes it look small.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 80

Vera Brittain photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part III, Epilogue, p. 204
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Stephen King photo
James A. Garfield photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Alexander Pope photo

“The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

the last two lines are a quote of 1 Corinthians 15:55 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/1_Corinthians#15:55.
The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Robert Fisk photo

“War is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Preface (page XIX)
The Great War for Civilization (2005)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Georges Clemenceau photo

“The difficulty between us and Germany is this: that Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

vassalité

Speech to the Senate (10 February 1912), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 220.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“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)

Aneurin Bevan photo
Yoshida Shoin photo
Tom Clancy photo

“Victory comes only to those prepared to make it, and take it.”

Patriot Games (1987)
1980s

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Muhammad photo

“Allah's Apostle used to say, "None has the right to be worshipped except Allah Alone (Who) honored His Warriors and made His Slave victorious, and He (Alone) defeated the (infidel) clans; so there is nothing after Him.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Abu Huraira, in Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 440
Sunni Hadith

Theodor Mommsen photo
Paul Keating photo

“This is the sweetest victory of all. This is a victory for the true believers; the people who, in difficult times, have kept the faith.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

1993 election victory speech.

Alex Jones photo

“Bernie wants us to live under the heavenly socialist–communist system like China. We never hear the left criticize that Mao Tse-Tung killed over 80 million people—the Chinese government admits—biggest mass murder in history. That's why there's so many liberal trendy places in Austin, in Denver, in New York, in LA, and San Francisco named after Mao. And people go and love play on their iPhones and the free market and their Chinese slave goods, and they drink beer and expensive wine and giggle about how fun it is to wear red stars. You couldn't put more bad luck on you, you couldn't trash your mojo better. Wearing swastika armbands, you stupid snot-nosed crud! That live off the backs of everybody that fought Nazism and Communism. You need to have your jaws broken! Don't you worry, reality is gonna crash in on you, trash! Who lowered our defenses and brought the Republic down; oh, we're already gone! And you celebrate it like you've joined the globalists mounting America's head on the wall, your great victory! A mass rape of women across Europe. The national draft coming in for women! The families falling apart! Women degraded into nothing but sexual objects! ALL in the name of Gloria Steinem and the Central Intelligence Agency program! And a Bernie Sanders with his fake Einstein hair, and his 'I'm a man of the people!' We go out and talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters, they can hardly talk—they're like him—'Free! Free! I want free stuff!' As if the New World Order is gonna give you anything free! Oh, it's free like a piece of cheese. And a little mouse comes out and it smells it and goes to bite it and, WA BAM! Breaks your neck. But your stupider than the little mouse. You can see all the countries and all the people caught in the mouse traps, caught in the big bear traps. You know what you do? You go into a trendy shop. On some capitalist strip. And you go in and you snuggle in with that credit card that daddy put money in for the trust fund. And you put on that little fur-rimmed coat and you're all sexy with your hammer and sickle on, and your Che Guevara and, you know, shirt from Rage Against the Machine, and the whole capitalist record company system selling it to you, and you go out on the street and you walk into McDonald's and you have yourself a double latte, oh yeah. Pathetic! Scum! Oh, how you'll burn in the camps, later. Wishing you had done something; I mean, you are the ultimate chumps, the ultimate buffoons, the ultimate schmucks!… But the public had so much freedom! They were so wealthy, even our poorest, they had no idea that what they were replacing it with was abject slavery.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Sanders Supporters are Pathetic Scum" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNxJnf_UAI, February 2016

George Galloway photo

“Your Excellency, Mr President: I greet you, in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq. I greet you, too, in the name of the Palestinian people, amongst whom I've just spent two weeks in the occupied Palestinian territories. I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt, fraternal greetings and support. And this was true, especially at the base in the refugee camps of Jabaliyah and Beach Camp in Gaza, in the Balatah refugee camp in Nablus and on the streets of the towns and villages in the occupied lands.I thought the president would appreciate knowing that even today, three years after the war, I still met families who were calling their newborn sons Saddam; and that two weeks ago, when I was trapped inside the Orient House, which is the Palestinian headquarters in al-Quds [Jerusalem], with 5,000 armed mustwatinin [settlers] outside demonstrating, pledging to tear down the Palestinian flag from the flagpole, the hundreds of shabab [youths] inside the compound were chanting that they wish to be with a DSh K [machine gun] in Baghdad to avenge the eyes of Abu Jihad. And the Youth Club in Silwan, which is the one of the most resistant of all the villages around Jerusalem, asked me to ask the president's permission if they could enrol him as an honourary member of their club and to present him with this flag from holy Jerusalem.I wish to say, sir, that I believe that we are turning the tide in Europe, that the scale of the humanitarian disaster which has been imposed upon the Iraqi people is now becoming more and more widely known and accepted. Fifty-five British members of parliament opposed the war, but 125 are demanding the lifting of the embargo; and this does not include the invisible section of the Conservative Party who must also be moving in that direction, and Sir Edward Heath is being a very persuasive advocate inside the Conservative Party.It is my belief that we must convey the very clear picture that 1994 has to be the year of the ending of the embargo against Iraq. Otherwise, famine and all the awful consequences, including acts of despair by Iraqis, will be the result; and this is the message we must convey to civilized opinion in Europe.Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem
"'I greet you in the name of thousands of Britons'", The Times, January 20, 1994, citing BBC monitoring service at 9 PM on January 19 as its source.
Speech to Saddam Hussein, January 19, 1994.
Source: See also David Morley Gorgeous George: The Life and Adventures of George Galloway, London: Politicos, 2007, p. 210-11. Galloway disputes the reporting of this quote and has repeatedly stated that the conclusion was a salute to "the Iraqi people" rather than Saddam Hussein personally.

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Sarah Palin photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house — a process which I as­sure you has been reversed long since — and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed.
Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, "All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse."”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

"Remarks at the Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln" http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/speeches/19540423%20Remarks%20at%20the%20Birthplace%20of%20Abraham%20Lincoln.htm, Hodgenville, Kentucky (April 23, 1954). The story originates http://books.google.com/books?id=AsrfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA128 from F. A. Mitchel, son and aide of General Mitchel.
1950s

George Soros photo
Galeazzo Ciano photo

“As always, victory will have a hundred fathers, but defeat will never be acknowledged by anyone at all.”

Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944) Italian politician

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.

John Muir photo
James A. Garfield photo
Mao Zedong photo

“In seeking victory, those who direct a war cannot overstep the limitations imposed by the objective conditions. Within these limitations, however, they can and must play a dynamic role in striving for victory. The stage of action for commanders in a war must be built upon objective possibilities, but on that stage they can direct the performance of many a drama, full of sound and color, power and grandeur.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Protracted Warfare (1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 指导战争的人们不能超越客观条件许可的限度期求战争的胜利,然而可以而且必须在客观条件的限度之内,能动地争取战争的胜利。战争指挥员活动的舞台,必须建筑在客观条件的许可之上,然而他们凭借这个舞台,却可以导演出很多有声有色、威武雄壮的戏剧来。

Muhammad bin Tughluq photo
Erich Ludendorff photo

“I will give up troops gladly as long as I know that they will be used in the right place to bring victory.”

Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937) German Army officer and later Nazi leader in Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch

"The Origins of the Military Dictatorship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff" by Jon Bridgman - 1960

Isaac Barrow photo

“The Mathematics which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately overreach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adheres to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depend upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the 47 unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

"Ration before the University of Cambridge on being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics," (1660), reported in: Mathematical Lectures, (1734), p. 28

Clement Attlee photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo

“The editor introduces Muhammad Ghuri in the Taj-ul-Maasir of Hasan Nizami as follows: 'After dwelling on the advantage and necessity of holy wars, without which the fold of Muhammad's flock could never be filled, he says that such a hero as these obligations of religion require has been found, 'during the reign of the lord of the world Mu'izzu-d dunya wau-d din, the Sultan of Sultans, Abu-l Muzaffar Muhammad bin Sam bin Husain' the destroyer of infidels and plural-worshippers etc.,' and that Almighty Allah had selected him from amongst the kings and emperors of the time, 'for he had employed himself in extirpating the enemies of religion and the state, and had deluged the land of Hind with the blood of their hearts, so that to the very day of resurrection travellers would have to pass over pools of gore in boats, - had taken every fort and stronghold which he attacked, and ground its foundations and pillars to powder under the feet of fierce and gigantic elephants, - had sent the whole world of idolatry to the fire of hell, by the well-watered blade of his Hindi sword, - had founded mosques and colleges in the places of images and idols'.'The narrative proceeds: 'Having equipped and set in order the army of Islam, and unfurled the standards of victory and the flags of power, trusting in the aid of the Almighty, he proceeded towards Hindustan…”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 209-212. Quoted in Sita Ram Goel : The Calcutta Quran Petition, ch. 6.

Gracie Allen photo
Peter Weiss photo
Hartley Coleridge photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.”

Le mariage est un combat à outrage avant lequel les deux époux demandent au ciel sa bénédiction, parce que s'aimer toujours est la plus téméraire des entreprises; le combat ne tarde pas à commencer, et la victoire, c'est-à-dire la liberté, demeure au plus adroit.
Part I, Meditation I: The Subject http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Physiology_of_Marriage/Part_1/Med_1.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Theodor Mommsen photo

“The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character. We have already indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens. Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between the orders. The formation of these new parties began in the fifth century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand. The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall, along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family, in the funeral procession.. the honouring of images was regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden amulet-case of the boys--trifling matters, but still important in a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so strictly adhered to, and where, even during the second Punic war, a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland of roses upon his head.(6) These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only acquired political importance in consequence of the change of constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first, a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Evelyn Underhill photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
William H. Prescott photo
Khushwant Singh photo
Osama bin Laden photo
Bea Arthur photo
Nguyen Khanh photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan…. I'm the responsible officer of the Government.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

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

Allen C. Guelzo photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“Each victory pulls the victor down slightly and makes it harder to put in maximum effort to improve further.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Foreword, p. XX
2010s, Winter is Coming (2015)

Bernard Cornwell photo
Gustav Stresemann photo
Ernest King photo

“The way to victory is long.
The going will be hard.
We will do the best we can with what we've got.
We must have more planes and ships- at once.
Then it will be our turn to strike.
We will win through- in time.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

King's first statement as Commander-in-Chief, United States fleet, sent on 24 December 1941. As quoted in History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume Three: The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931-April 1942 (1948) by Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 255

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi photo

“…If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you… God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience… so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge. This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries…”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in "Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addresses Muslims in Mosul", The Telegraph (5 July 2014)
2014
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html

Isaac Asimov photo

“Asimov: Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. For example, what difference did it make to the people of the ancient world that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire? Obviously, that event made some difference to a lot of individuals. But if you look at humanity in general, you'll see that life went on pretty much as it had before the conquest.
On the other hand, consider the changes that were made in people's daily lives by the development of agriculture or the mariner's compass… and by the invention of gunpowder or printing. Better yet, look at recent history and ask yourself, "What difference would it have made if Hitler had won World War II?" Of course, such a victory would have made a great difference to many people. It would have resulted in much horror, anguish, and pain. I myself would probably not have survived.
But Hitler would have died eventually, and the effects of his victory would gradually have washed out and become insignificant—in terms of real change—when compared to such advances as the actual working out of nuclear power, the advent of television, or the invention of the jet plane.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Theodor Mommsen photo

“Bloodless victories are often feeble and dangerous”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

On the mission which resulted in Peace by Gauis Caesar to the East in the year 6 A.D.
Vol.2
The Provinces of the Roman Empire, From Caesar to Diocletian 1854-6

Marjorie Dannenfelser photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Surely you do not imagine that we shall be victorious without applying the most cruel revolutionary terror?”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

As quoted in George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (1981), page 57.
Attributions

Will Durant photo
Muhammad photo

“I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; kill him!"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 56, Number 791
Sunni Hadith

Hilaire Belloc photo

“Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On Statistics"
The Silence of the Sea (1940)

Phil Hartman photo

“Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such other nature films as "Earwigs, Ew." and "Man Vs Nature… The Road To Victory".”

Phil Hartman (1948–1998) Canadian American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist

On the Simpsons, Troy McClure

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Anastas Mikoyan photo

“Like Lenin Comrade Stalin is a leader of a higher type. He is a mountain eagle, without fear in the fight, who boldly leads the bolshevik party on unexplored roads toward the total victory of Communism.”

Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978) Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman

Statement of 13 March 1939, as quoted in "Facts on Communism" (1960) by the United States Congress, p. 157

Bidzina Ivanishvili photo

“Georgians take pride in Stalin and see him as a symbol of the victory over Fascism… no one should be able to take that away from them.”

Bidzina Ivanishvili (1956) Georgian businessman and exprime minister

Speaking with the local news outlet GDS http://georgiatoday.ge/news/4776/Ivanishvili-Refuses-to-Denounce-Georgia%E2%80%99s-Stalin-Worshipers-
See also: Stalin

Adlai Stevenson photo

“The great aristocrat, the beloved leader, the profound historian, the gifted painter, the superb politician, the lord of language, the orator, the wit—yes, and the dedicated bricklayer—behind all of them was a simple man of faith, steadfast in defeat, generous in victory, resigned in age, trusting in a loving providence, and committing his achievements and his triumphs to a higher power.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Eulogizing Winston Churchill, Washington, D.C. (28 January 1965); as quoted in "Stevenson Delivers Eulogy to Churchill; 'Simple Faith in God' Cited" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZmQwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mWwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4314%2C3973257 by the Associated Press, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (29 January 1965); reproduced in Adlai Stevenson (1966) by Lillian Ross, p. 47

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Hamid Karzai photo

“Today, while celebrating the jihad victory, we once again invite those who have sided with aliens because of seduction against their nation, to give up sedition and evil and join peaceful life.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

Karzai offers peace, Taliban free Frenchwoman http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP14081620070428?pageNumber=2 Apr 28, 2007
Message to Taliban

“Against human opposition the machine usually emerges victorious, since individual patterns tend to be not random but a function of emotions and previous training and experience.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 90

Winston S. Churchill photo
Neville Chamberlain photo
Khaled Mashal photo
José Maria Eça de Queiroz photo

“In the meantime England enjoys the prestige of "the great victory of Afghanistan" for a short while – certain of having to begin it once more in ten or fifteen years, because they can neither conquer and annex a vast kingdom, as large as France, nor allow the existence of a few million hostile fanatics at their side. Their policy, therefore, is to weaken them periodically with a devastating invasion: such violence is required of a great Empire.”

No entanto a Inglaterra goza por algum tempo a «grande vitória do Afeganistão» com a certeza de ter de recomeçar daqui a dez anos ou quinze anos; porque nem pode conquistar e anexar um vasto reino, que é grande como a França, nem pode consentir, colados à sua ilharga, uns poucos de milhões de homens fanáticos, batalhadores e hostis. A «política», portanto, é debilitá-los periodicamente, com uma invasão arruinadora. São as fortes necessidades de um grande império.
"Afeganistão e Irlanda"; "Afghanistan and Ireland" p. 60.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Day Before the Revolution” p. 270 (originally published in Galaxy, August 1974)
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo

“I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America… As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent— doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies— to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!… I call upon the honour of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at THE DISGRACE OF HIS COUNTRY! In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion of his country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (18 November, 1777), responding to a speech by Henry Howard, 12th Earl of Suffolk, who spoke in favour of the war against the American colonists. Suffolk was a descendant of Howard of Effingham, who led the English navy against the Spanish Armada. Effingham had commissioned a series of tapestries on the defeat of the Armada, and sold them to King James I. Since 1650 they were hung in the House of Lords, where they remained until destroyed by fire in 1834.
William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 150-6.

“Life's race well run,
Life's work well done,
Life's victory won,
Now cometh rest.”

Edward Hazen Parker (1823–1896) American writer

Funeral Ode on James A. Garfield, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Azem Hajdari photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo
Bruce Sterling photo

“There's no victory-condition for being human.”

Bruce Sterling (1954) American writer, speaker, futurist, and design instructor

Slashdot Interview http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/12/23/157257/interview-bruce-sterling-answers-your-questions.

Antonio Gramsci photo
Donald J. Trump photo