“Small victories are better than none.”
Source: Unwind
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Neal Shusterman 122
American novelist 1962Related quotes
“The way to get the most out of a victory is to follow it with another that makes it look small.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 80

“I consider my release to be only a small victory for human rights and democracy.”
"In Exile, Free Speech at Last in The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/11/22/in-exile-free-speech-at-last/4591c34b-12c4-4a86-be28-261f6a260b8d/ (22 November 1997)

1963, Third State of the Union Address

人皆知我所以勝之形,而莫知吾所以制勝之形。
Source: The Art of War, Chapter VI · Weaknesses and Strengths

“There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”
Book I, Ch. 30. Of Cannibals
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory.”
Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=Ihs8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA407&dq=honorable+defeat (13 September 1844), Buffalo, New York, quoted in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser (14 September 1844). Fillmore had lost the Whig nomination for governor of New York. The newspaper summary was: "He entreated them to enter the contest with zeal and enthusiasm; but as they valued the sacredness of their cause, and the stability of their principles, to resort to no unfair means: that an honorable defeat was better than a dishonorable victory."
1840s

Source: Report on the Potsdam Conference (1945)
Context: Our victory in Europe was more than a victory of arms.
It was a victory of one way of life over another. It was a victory of an ideal founded on the rights of the common man, on the dignity of the human being, on the conception of the State as the servant — and not the master — of its people.
A free people showed that it was able to defeat professional soldiers whose only moral arms were obedience and the worship of force.
We tell ourselves that we have emerged from this war the most powerful nation in the world — the most powerful nation, perhaps, in all history. That is true, but not in the sense some of us believe it to be true.
The war has shown us that we have tremendous resources to make all the materials for war. It has shown us that we have skillful workers and managers and able generals, and a brave people capable of bearing arms.
All these things we knew before.
The new thing — the thing which we had not known — the thing we have learned now and should never forget, is this: that a society of self-governing men is more powerful, more enduring, more creative than any other kind of society, however disciplined, however centralized.