Quotes about defeat (1162 quotes, page 12)

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

It is unknown if Patton ever said these precise words. However, Anthony Cave Brown notes https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-patton-say-we-defeated-the-wrong-enemy/36063#36063 in Bodyguard of Lies Volume II that "Patton was relieved of command of the 3rd Army by Eisenhower just after the end of the war for stating publicly that America had been fighting the wrong enemy— Germany instead of Russia", so it is at least an accurate paraphrase. For further discussion, see relevant threads on skeptics.stackexchange.com https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-patton-say-we-defeated-the-wrong-enemy and /r/AskHistorians https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/640pg5/what_did_general_george_s_patton_mean_when_he/.
Disputed

“The sin of bourgeois patriotism was to confound a certain economic form with the national. It connected two things that are entirely different. Forms of the economy, however firm they may seem, are changeable. The national is eternal. If I mix the eternal and the temporal, the eternal will necessarily collapse when the temporal collapses. This was the real cause for the collapse of liberal society. It was rooted not in the eternal, but in the temporal, and when the temporal declined it took the eternal down with it. Today it is only an excuse for a system that brings growing economic misery. That is the only reason why international Jewry organizes the battle of the proletarian forces against both powers, the economy and the nation, and defeat them.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“Defeat your defeats, and never come back your feet.”

Umair Ahmad (1997) Entrepreneur, Writer, Researcher & Film Producer

Lahore: History and Architecture of Mughal Monuments Oxford University Press, (16 April 2016)

“There is, too, a sort of relief in admitting defeat. Struggling to drag a mountain from my path, acknowledging at last the mountain would remain, lying down beneath the mountain, thankful for the shade of it.”

Tanith Lee book Quest for the White Witch

Book Two, Part I “In the Wilderness”, Chapter 2 (p. 234)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Mountain , Lying

“Let us proclaim it aloud, let us proclaim it in our fall and in our defeat, this is the greatest of all ages! and do you know the reason why? because it is the mildest.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Age

“My hope is that... I will open Democrats' and other progressives' eyes to the many values shared by the Left and Right... like the desire to end corporate welfare and convert to a renewable energy (solar) economy. ...the way to defeat Trump... is to embrace (not marginalize) issues such as raising the minimum wage. ...It is a question of do or just further fade away.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

To the Ramparts (2018)

Way , Hope , Question

“We are stronger, we are better, but while we are building a great future, the radical left Democrats in Washington are trying to burn it all down. They have spent the last three years, and I can even go further than that, three years since the election, but we go before the election, working to erase your ballots and overthrow our democracy. But with your help, we have exposed the far left’s corruption and defeated their sinister schemes and let’s see what happens in the coming months. Let’s watch. Let’s just watch. Very dishonest people. Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.””

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

Democracy , Future , People , Help

“Every day, we are learning more about this virus and the disease it causes. One of the things we are learning is that although older people are the hardest hit, younger people are not spared. Data from many countries clearly show that people under 50 make up a significant proportion of patients requiring hospitalization. Today, I have a message for young people: you are not invincible. This virus could put you in hospital for weeks, or even kill you. Even if you don’t get sick, the choices you make about where you go could be the difference between life and death for someone else. I’m grateful that so many young people are spreading the word and not the virus. As I keep saying, solidarity is the key to defeating COVID-19 - solidarity between countries, but also between age groups. Thank you for heeding our call for solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Making love , Country , People , Learning

“Allah has commanded rulers to be shepherds; He did not command them to be money-collectors. The attitude of the earliest leaders of this Ummah was that of shepherds, not money-collectors. Soon you will find your leaders becoming money-collectors, not shepherds. Once that happens, there will be no more modesty, trustworthiness or honesty. The best way of running the people's affairs is to examine the Muslims' situation, find out what their dues are and give them to them, and take from them what is due from them. Then go to ahl al-dhimmah and give them what is due to them and take from them what is due from them. Then confront the enemy and seek to defeat them by means of sincerity.”

Uthman (574–656) Companion of Muhammad and third Rashidun Caliph

Letter to Governors of Muslim Empire of Caliphate, quoted in History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 5, p. 244

Money , People , Sincerity , Way

“Government violence is not the result of violent revolutions, but the product of government itself. Any movement that leaves the State intact will fail in ending the oppressions we are fighting against. A nonviolent movement that replaces one government with another—and this is the greatest victory a nonviolent movement has ever achieved in the history of the world—ends up betraying itself, allowing Power to change its masks without addressing the fundamental problems of society. Nonviolence as an analytical tool has no means of understanding this kind of defeat—the kind that looks like victory.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 2. Recuperation is How We Lose

Understanding , History , Victory , Problem

“The example of a revolution and the lessons it applies for Latin America have destroyed all coffee house theories; we have demonstrated that a small group of men supported by the people without fear of dying can overcome a disciplined regular army and defeat it.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in It Has Been 50 Years Since Che Guevara Was Murdered http://www.thenation.com/article/archive/it-has-been-50-years-since-che-guevara-was-murdered/, by Bill Ayers and Michael Steven Smith

Housing , Support , People , Coffee

“War crimes are only committed by defeated powers.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

But as the Nazis learned in 1945, unemployed war criminals can usually find work with the new hegemonic power.
"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

War

“But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Appeal of June 18, Speech of June 18

Hope

“There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated 'poor white trash.'”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.

Ch. 41
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Time , Country , War , People

“Revolutionary morality consists, in whatever circumstances, in resolutely struggling against all enemies, maintaining one's vigilance, standing ready to fight, and refusing to submit, to bow one's head. Only by so doing can we defeat the enemy, and fulfill our revolutionary tasks.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"On Revolutionary Morality" (1958)
1950's, On Revolutionary Morality (1958)

Fight

“A group of sheep leading by one lion can defeat a group of lion leading by one sheep.”

Christian Canlubo (2002) Filipino Internet Entrepreneur

Source: https://web.facebook.com/canlubochristian5 | Christian Canlubo personal Facebook account

“The pursuit of happiness is not only self-defeating but also impossible. It’s like trying to catch a carrot hanging by a string tied to a stick attached to your back.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

Self-confidence , Happiness

“The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons. Because if we’re going to be forced to suffer by simply existing, we might as well learn how to suffer well.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

Happiness , Suffering , Learning , Self-confidence

“Love is a fire that burns unseen,
A wound that aches yet isn't felt,
An always discontent contentment,
A pain that rages without hurting,A longing for nothing but to long,
A loneliness in the midst of people,
A never feeling pleased when pleased,
A passion that gains when lost in thought.It's being enslaved of your own free will;
It's counting your defeat a victory;
It's staying loyal to your killer.But if it's so self-contradictory,
How can Love, when Love chooses,
Bring human hearts into sympathy?”

Luís de Camões book Rhythmas de Lvis de Camoes

Rimas, Sonnet 81 (as translated by Richard Zenith)
Listen to the poem in Portuguese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ToldDy8izc&feature=youtu.be&t=33s
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver
Original: (pt) Amor é um fogo qu'arde sem se ver,
É ferida que dói, e não se sente,
É um contentamento descontente,
É dor que desatina sem doer.É um não querer mais que bem querer,
É um andar solitário entre a gente,
É nunca contentar-se de contente,
É um cuidar que ganha em se perder.É querer estar preso por vontade,
É servir a quem vence o vencedor
É ter com quem nos mata lealdade.Mas como causar pode seu favor
Nos corações humanos amizade,
Se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?

Hurt , Pain , Loneliness , Victory

“So that as I tried to say in my speech, we are not faced with the question of balancing our budget, or having a tax reduction. I believe we are faced with the fact that we are going to have a deficit mostly because of the sharp rise in the recent years in space and defense, and to increase our taxes sufficient to bring that budget into balance would be defeating, because of course it would provide a heavy deflationary effect on our economy, and move us into a recession at an accelerated rate.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Question

“[A]lterations in policy had to be made with continual reference to the need to be elected in order to be able to put principles into power. I repeatedly had to reinforce the message that the real penalty for our defeat was paid by the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the young and the old that the Labour Party existed to help.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Later life
Source: ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 540

Penalty , Help

“I will work in the U.S. Senate to support a robust public health response so that we can defeat this virus, putting Georgia’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the lead, trusting medical expertise, doctors, and scientists to bring the tools to bear, the technology to bear, the ingenuity to bear, and the resources to bear necessary to stop the spread of this virus to defeat it and to get our daily lives back — and to rush direct economic relief to people who need help right now.”

Jon Ossoff (1987) American politician

Quoted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Jolt: Raphael Warnock exults, Jon Ossoff claims victory, and Republicans wonder what happened, (6 January 2021)

Support , People , Help , Health

“[Nature] only keeps us alive by a complicated system of the most shameful illusions, falsifying beyond rectification life, death, and after-death. Having made us take part in this poor puzzling game of life, she has taken care that all the rules shall be unfavourable to us: the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, we are always swindled. Thus years of hard work; and self-denial are frequently lost by a slip or chance, but seldom or never saved by a chance. Our health may be ruined by a pin-prick, but never doubled by an accident. We fall seriously ill in a moment, and take weeks or months to recover; lose a limb by some sudden mishap, but never by a good hap regain it. We cannot reach even a low degree of wisdom or knowledge without long hard study, while to be ignorant and foolish is the easiest and most natural thing in the world for us. Our sorrows are real and enduring; our joys deceptive and transient; our prizes of victory are not to be compared with our forfeits of defeat.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Chance , Study , Game , Victory

“Both Stoicism and Epicureanism — the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure — were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely as the stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth century the symbols of a shattered revolution and a broken France.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Pleasure , Forgetting , Happiness , Effort

“Lord yes, in a certain sense it was a preventive war, [motivated by] the constant threat of attack, the greater likelihood of its inevitability in the future, and by the military's claim: today war is still possible without defeat, but not in two years! Yes, the generals. It could only have been avoided by a rapprochement with England, that is still my conviction. But after we had decided for a [common] policy with Austria, we could not desert her in such danger.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Remarks to Conrad Haussmann (24 February 1918), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 48

Motivation , War , Future , Sense

“We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1931–2015) 11th President of India, scientist and science administrator

Problem

“I know not age, nor weariness nor defeat.”

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890–1995) American philanthropist and mother of John F. Kennedy

Age

“Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

“Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Referring to Arturo Ui (representing Adolf Hitler), in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)

Bitch , World , Men

“Defeat means that we lose a particular battle or war. Failure does not allow us to go on fighting.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), The Defeated Ones

War , Failure , Fight

“The defeated are those who never fail.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), The Defeated Ones

“I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), The Defeated Ones

People

“Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), The Defeated Ones

Joy

“Aware that in every competition there are bound to be winners and losers, we wish to call on all stakeholders to exhibit maturity in accepting both defeat and victory. In this way, reactions to any of the two conditions would be measured, modest and charitable towards one another.”

Philip Naameh (1948) Ghanaian Catholic archbishop

GCBC APPEAL FOR CALM https://www.cbcgha.org/index.php/2020/12/16/gcbc-appeal-for-calm/ (December 16, 2020)

Victory , Way

“When choices do not start from one's own ethnicity we defeat tribalism.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10938293-when-choices-do-not-start-from-one-s-own-ethnicity-we

“As for the methods of survival, feel free to use your divine weapons to defeat the enemy.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling

“If you get too emotional, you are ready to be defeated. No manifestation of emotions in the face of logic whenever it comes to the domain of philosophy.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“We live in a self-defeating culture that pays lip service to heroic action in times of crisis, yet brutally punishes the very kind of snap judgments and instant security profiling that make such heroism possible in the first place.”

Michelle Malkin (1970) American political commentator

America’s Empty Slogan: “See Something, Say Something” http://michellemalkin.com/2013/04/17/americas-empty-slogan-see-something-say-something/ (April 17, 2013)

Time

“Self-promotion is self-defeating. No matter how brilliant an individual, one becomes instinctively "leery" when he toots his own horn.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Leonard Read Journals, September 18, 1959 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1959/leonard-e-read-journal-september-1959

“If I were a metaphor I'd be a truth. I am invincible, I am never defeated. I am immortal, I never die, I'm invisible, nobody can cut me, I am for eternity, I have no end, I am a stone's line, no one can erase me, the time can change, but i never change, I'm the truth, no one can deny me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Truth , Change , Time

“Most of us are good "starters" but poor "finishers" of everything we begin. Moreover, people are prone to give up at the first signs of defeat. There is no substitute for persistence. Failure cannot cope with Persistance.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich (1938) p. 86

People , Failure

“Temporary defeat should mean only one thing, the certain knowledge that there is something wrong with your plan. Millions of men go through life in misery and poverty, because they lack a sound plan through which to accumulate a fortune.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich (1938) p. 73

Knowledge , Life , Men

“The tragedy about Romeo and Juliet is not that they died so young but that the boy-meets-girl reflex should be so overpowering as to defeat all common sense.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Podkayne of Mars

Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 10 (p. 125)

Girl , Boy , Sense

“Let all of Europe league against us and Europe will be defeated.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Misc Quotes
Source: Speech on the King's flight to the Jacobin club

“We strongly condemn all attempts to rewrite history, reduce the number of victims and minimize contribution to the defeat of Nazism and fascism, as well as attempts to rehabilitate those ideologists.”

Ivica Dačić (1966) Serbian politician

Source: "Ivica Dacic: Serbia and Russia are more than just historical friends and allies" in The State Duma http://duma.gov.ru/en/news/51667/ (2 June 2021)

History

“The average man is either victorious or defeated and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not "see." "Seeing" dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

Dependency , Victory , Suffering

“If our efforts prove useless we shall deplore our defeat; but no bitterness will torture our conscience when from it fatal consequences should emerge, as they ought to.”

Marcelo H. del Pilar (1850–1896) Filipino writer, lawyer, and journalist (1850-1896)

Source: Marcelo H. del Pilar, La Solidaridad II.65 (30 September 1891)

Effort

“This important act reflects the will of a people demanding unity, especially within the opposition, in order to defeat the dictatorship... I want a social pact with every sector, the productive sectors, with business, with workers, with teachers, with farmers and campesinos, with the informal economy and small and medium-sized businesses”

Xiomara Castro (1959) First Lady of Honduras

Source: Quoted in Could Honduras Shift Left? A Look at Xiomara Castro, by Brendan O'Boyle, America's Quarterly, October 14, 2021

People , Teachers , Business

“[T]he main work of life lies in carrying on worthily the great common task of civilization: to play one's due part in the enterprise of feeding some hundreds of millions of men, in seeing that they are protected against violence and fraud, that they have access to justice, and as far as may be to education, that they have some freedom to pursue life and happiness, and are not cut off altogether from the wonders and beauties of the world and the mind of man. To succeed in doing this is civilization: to fail is the defeat of civilization. For civilization is, ultimately, the process whereby a human society in search, as Aristotle puts it, of a "good life for man", gradually overcomes the obstacles, material and other, that stand in its way and makes man increasingly master of his environment.”

Gilbert Murray (1866–1957) Anglo-Australian scholar

1920s, The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (1929)
Source: "Peace and Strife as Elements in Life: The Ideal of “Unhindered Activity”", pp. 37-38

Search , Fraud , Life , Men

“Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 502

Loneliness , World , Fear , Men

“It’s on all of us to stand up, to speak out when you see someone being abused. This is an organization that’s defined American — excuse me, defeated American enemies on land, sea, and air, and been defined by the way we treat others.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, February 2021, Remarks by President Biden to Department of Defense Personnel, February 10, 2021

Way , Sea

“I am a professional athlete and pressure is a part of every professional sport. It will be a dream come true for me if I could defeat the Chinese on my way to a medal, so if there’s pressure, there’s also incentive.”

Sania Nehwal (1990) Indian badminton player

"Saina Nehwal Interview: Sportskeeda Exclusive" https://www.sportskeeda.com/badminton/saina-nehwal-interview-sportskeeda-exclusive (19 April 2012)

Sport , Dreams , Parting , Way

“Thus, it will be necessary to try and defeat the enemy in field battles. And, excuse me, with whom, and with what?! If so far not even the partial mobilisation has been carried out?! No one is giving clear answers to these questions. Simply because there aren't any.”

Igor Girkin (1970) Russian citizen from Moscow who played a significant role in the War in Donbass

"'It's meaningless to hope for victory': Top Russian ex-spy turned influencer warns Putin's offensive in Eastern Ukraine is going 'very bad', troops will suffer 'huge losses' while their leadership leaves 'much to be desired'" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10836379/Ukraine-war-Ex-Russian-commander-says-meaningless-hope-victory-Donbas.html, Daily Mail, 20 May 2022
About the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Question