Source: Paradise Lost
“Force overcome by force.”
Vi victa vis.
Pro Milone, Chapter XI, section 30
Variant translation: Violence conquered by violence.
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Principles
“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”
Source: Kitchen (1988)
“A general is not easily overcome who can form a true judgment of his own and the enemy's forces. Valour is superior to numbers. The nature of the ground is often of more consequence than courage. (General Maxims)”
Amplius iuuat uirtus quam multitudo.
De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
A New View of Society (1813-1816)
Context: All the measures now proposed are only a compromise with the errors of the present systems; but as these errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail.
Source: "Overcoming resistance to change." 1948, p. 520
Preface to the second edition (1953) of The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1949)
Context: I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. My poems are acts of force and violence directed against the evil which murders us all. If you like, they are designed not just to overthrow the present State, economic system, and Church, but all prevailing systems of human collectivity altogether... I wish to speak to and for all those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption.
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
