“It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

http://www.paulglover.org/metroeco.html (Metropolitan Ecology syllabus, section 7, Temple University), April 2007
Context: “The world is coming to a beginning rather than an end. We have the knowledge, tools, creativity, and capital to proceed. Our challenge is merely to begin where we live, with whatever capabilities are at hand.”

Source: Ecclesiastes 7:8

Pt. I - Emerson, st. 1
A Fable for Critics (1848)

Source: The Socialist Manifesto (2019), p.221

speech at Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942 : ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html)
Referring to the British victory over the German Afrika Korps at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Variant: This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.
Source: Their Finest Hour

Source: Toll the Hounds