Quotes about defeat

Thriller (1982)

Variant: Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army

To Leon Goldensohn, about attacking the Soviets (15 March 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Translation by Lionel Giles
Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army

Said in a visit to Nigeria in 2019. Recorded in an Instagram post https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzxt5h-nYhT/ on UN Environment

Source: Ender's Game

Ibid., p. 79
Original: Levo comigo a consciência da derrota como um pendão de vitória.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

Source: Queen Margot, or Marguerite de Valois

Source: The First Century After Beatrice

Alex Jones: The "Justin Biebler" Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMB0KyhPN8, 21 February 2011.
2011

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

His own family toppled him, quoted in Obituary: N. T. Rama Rao, 19 January 1996, 8 January 2014, Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-n-t-rama-rao-1324748.html,

Canto V, lines 127–138 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

<span class="plainlinks"> Children http://www.occupypoetry.net/children_1/</span>
From Poetry

Source: Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), P.173

" Exclusive interview with Matthew Mcconaughey http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/7774937/exclusive-interview-with-matthew-mcconaughey?page=all" on hollywood.com, March 18, 2011: On playing Mick Haller in the The Lincoln Lawyer

(2009) Independent News article 2009 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/hayao-miyazaki-modern-movies-are-too-weird-for-me-1678129.html
On Ponyo

149
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Probably apocryphal. This quotation does not appear in any print translation of Sun Tzu. The first citation in Google Books is from 2002; no citation in Google Books occurs in a translation of Sun Tzu.
Misattributed

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, (July 2018)

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Source: Eragon

Source: All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

All Men are Mortal (1946)

As quoted in Perfectionism : What's Bad About Being Too Good? (1987) by Miriam Adderholdt and Jan Goldberg, p. 85

"Benefit Of Clergy: Some Notes On Salvador Dalí," Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture (1944) http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/dali/english/e_dali

"As I Please," Tribune (28 July 1944)^{http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/}
As I Please (1943–1947)

Yesterday and Today, 1917-1967: Contemporaries Report on the Progress of German Soviet Friendship - Page 105 - by Verlag Zeit im Bild - Soviet Union - 1967.

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), pp. 39-41

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

(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

The Bonehunters (2006)

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Presidential address to the AFPFL Supreme Council Session (August 1946)

Speech to Red Army personnel, 13 May 1940
Source: http://www.warmech.ru/1941war/sher_4.html

About the defeat of Jaipal. Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 27 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

As Military Adviser in China - Page 245 by Aleksandr Ivanovich Cherepanov - China - 1982.

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist

From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika', 21-6-1999 http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

Una derrota peleada vale más que una victoria casual.
100 Masones Su Palabra (2010)

Letter to Richard Rees (3 March 1949), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In front of your nose, 1945-1950 (1968), ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, p. 478
Context: I always disagree, however, when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.

Source: The Art of War, Chapter I · Detail Assessment and Planning

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: Third we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding. At times we are able to humiliate our worst enemy. Inevitably, his weak moments come and we are able to thrust in his side the spear of defeat. But this we must not do. Every word and deed must contribute to an understanding with the enemy and release those vast reservoirs of goodwill which have been blocked by impenetrable walls of hate.

Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3, Paragraph 1.
Context: Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

§ 6
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain. After the summer of 1937 those with eyes in their heads realized that the Government could not win the war unless there were some profound change in the international set-up, and in deciding to fight on Negrin and the others may have been partly influenced by the expectation that the world war which actually broke out in 1939 was coming in 1938. The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that.
The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds’ worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

§ 5
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

Source: Posted on instagram @angelovulpini, September 2nd, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/p/CTVVtsfrRvh/

Source: https://quotepark.com/suggestions/create-quote/author/?originator_name=Angelo%20Vulpini

Source: "As I Please," Tribune, (24 December 1943)

Variant: The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The General in His Labyrinth

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy”, p. 101.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Context: To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire-builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)
Context: I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Context: I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Source: The Art of Peace (1992)

Quotes, Concession speech (2000)
Context: I've seen America in this campaign, and I like what I see. It's worth fighting for and that's a fight I'll never stop. As for the battle that ends tonight, I do believe, as my father once said, that "No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape the soul and let the glory out."

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Source: Othello

Source: Interesting Times: The Play

Source: Invisible Man

Source: Dreams of a Final Theory

2015, Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism speech (September 2015)

11 April 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1957; digitized version in 2006), p. ix
General sources

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)