“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
“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
Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 122
“Learn from each one of your defeats; your losses must be as close to you as your victories.”
S'pore Chess News, 15 November 2010 http://www.singaporechessnews.com/nadanian_singapore_goodbye.html
Source: The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
Hagakure (c. 1716)
Context: People with intelligence will use it to fashion things both true and false and will try to push through whatever they want with their clever reasoning. This is injury from intelligence. Nothing you do will have effect if you do not use truth.
In affairs like law suits or even in arguments, by losing quickly one will lose in fine fashion. It is like sumo. If one thinks only of winning, a sordid victory will be worse than a defeat. For the most part, it becomes a squalid defeat.
As quoted in "2011's Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters" http://www.fpa.es/en/awards/2011/leonard-cohen-1/speech/
“There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them.”
As quoted in Honor Your Gifts (2007) by Dona M. Deane, p. 199.
Context: There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.
