Quotes about retreat (318 quotes, page 4)

“But the wise man is fortified against all inroads; he is alert; he will not retreat before the attack of poverty, or of sorrow, or of disgrace, or of pain. He will walk undaunted both against them and among them.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LIX: On Pleasure and Joy

Pain

“The best age for a guerrilla fighter varies between 25 and 35 years, a stage in which the life of most persons has assumed definite shape. Whoever sets out at that age, abandoning his home, his children, and his entire world must have thought well of his responsibility and reached a firm decision not to retreat a step.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. II: 2. The Guerrilla Fighter as Combatant

Home , Personality , Children , Age

“I was at Stalingrad, you know… And from that time onwards I have done nothing but manoeuvre to escape encirclement by the enemy: retreat on retreat, defeat upon defeat. And here I am in marvellous Paris. What do you think is going to happen now?”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

To Raoul Nordling
Dallas, Gregor (2006). 1945: The War That Never Ended https://books.google.pl/books?id=PTEV0CPuhRcC&pg=PA173&hl=pl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUp-aI4dTfAhWKw4sKHYBJDg8Q6AEILDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 178. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300119886

Thinking , Time

“Yamamoto was an aggressive and inspiring officer, but he made the error of dividing his huge force five ways and of thinking that his foe would behave in a predictable way. After his crushing defeat on Midway, he ordered a general retreat and took ill in his cabin. U.S. naval intelligence again was his undoing. When he took off on an inspection tour from Rabaul, American fighter planes were up and waiting for him.”

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884–1943) Japanese Marshal Admiral

C.L. Sulzberger, The American Heritage Picture History of World War II (1966), p. 212
Disputed

Waiting , Intelligence , Thinking , Way

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Part of this is often misquoted as "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," most notably by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his I've Been To The Mountaintop https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm speech. Similar expressions were used in ancient times, for example by Seneca the Younger (Ep. Mor. 3.24.12 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep3.shtml): scies nihil esse in istis terribile nisi ipsum timorem ("You will understand that there is nothing dreadful in this except fear itself"), and by Michel de Montaigne: "The thing I fear most is fear", in Essays (1580), Book I, Ch. 17.
1930s, First Inaugural Address (1933)

Life , Time , Understanding , Country

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

"To the Public", No. 1 (1 January 1831) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2928t.html, quoted in [Todras, Ellen H., Angelina Grimké: Voice of Abolition, https://books.google.com/books?id=-S8ZAQAAMAAJ, 1999, Linnet, 978-0-208-02485-5, 46]
The Liberator (1831 - 1866)

Housing , Justice , Dead , People

“On the other hand, refusing to accept and affirm, avoidable suffering, unfair distributions of goods, uninhibited aggression, and so forth, are refusals which have long been and continue to be part of everyday morality. As such, they are a well-established part of life as it is. Animal liberation extends such concerns, which have traditionally been focused on the human world and on human life, to include equal consideration for animals. In this way, animal liberation is simply carrying on the business of everyday moral practice. Therefore, it does not loathe or deny life as it is. Rather, unlike Callicott's proposed retreat to the wilderness, animal liberation is participating in life and, hopefully, in its continuing moral evolution.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Article Review of Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1244&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 4 (1984), p. 120

Business , Suffering , Animals , World

“To wear away the time, we learn to play chess,
In thousands, horses and infantry chase each other.
Move quickly into action, in attack or in retreat.
Talent and swift feet give us the upper hand.”

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

"Learning to Play Chess"
1950's

Horse , Time , Learning

“We are not to retreat from life, pinning our hopes on ‘elsewhere.’ but to know that we will come to that final destination best by living full here and now, be it through joy, or pain, or a mix of both.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Rock that Is Higher (1993)

Life , Joy , Pain , Hope

“Because of the many things that have happened to me in my life, I have touched the decline more than the rise. I decided to retreat into myself. But I soon return stronger.”

Nedim Jahić (2001) Bosnian singer

Life

“Democracy for most of us is not an ism. It is a way of life. It does not represent any rigid form of state or national organization. It is something constantly developing and unfolding, changing from day to day, making mistakes, advancing in this direction and retreating in that, but always animated by a few fundamental ideas: that men have a right to live their own lives, provided they don’t tread too heavily on other people’s toes;…”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 31

Democracy , People , Animals , Way

“Look—I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand like my dad, they lay in bed wondering, can I keep my health care, can I pay my mortgage. Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don′t look like you or worship the way you do or don′t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person′s shoes—as my mom would say—just for a moment, stand in their shoes. Because here′s the thing about life: there′s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”

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

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Family , Soul , Life , Understanding

“As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can go the other way. You protect yourself by opening up. You don't ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you're willing to share. For me it was humor. I learned that even though I didn't belong to one group, I could be a part of of any group that was laughing.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 140/141
Born a Crime

Way , Parting , Learning

“A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself.”

Northrop Frye book Anatomy of Criticism

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction

Memory , Art , Life

“The Rhine is still the Rhine, the great divider... Immediately you are over the Rhine, the spirit of place has changed... It is as if the life had retreated eastwards. As if the Germanic life were slowly ebbing away from contact with western Europe, ebbing to the deserts of the east.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Source: 'A Letter from Germany', written 19 February 1924, printed in The New Statesman (13 October 1934), quoted in D. H. Lawrence, Selected Essays (1950), pp. 175-176

Life , Change

“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 68

Communication , Children , Learning , Chance

“The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order, by Henry A. Kissinger, The Wall Street Journal https://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-forever-alter-the-world-order/, April 3, 2020
2020s

Democracy , World

“The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Source: Faust. Translation by Bayard Taylor

Dreams , Life

Quotes about retreat page 4

Quotes about retreat
page 4