Defeat Quotes

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

Failure, Live, Win

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Emotional, Win, Cannot

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
Malcolm X

Time, Adversity, Next

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
George Edward Woodberry

Failure, True, Worst

Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.
Napoleon Hill

Life, Success, Men

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
Douglas MacArthur

Strong, Humble, Enough

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.
Winston Churchill

Before, After, Victory

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
George Carlin

Said, She, Purpose

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
Winston Churchill

Victory, Problems, Difficult

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
John F. Kennedy

Victory, Thousand, Fathers

If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.
Zig Ziglar

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
John F. Kennedy

Policy, Foreign, Domestic

Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.
Norman Vincent Peale

Success, Attitude, Failure

Quote

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Courage, Heart, Greatest

The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
Sun Tzu

Enemy, Against, Lies

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
Anais Nin

Life, Adversity, Lose

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
Barack Obama

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
Napoleon Hill

Often, Misfortune, Temporary

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
Denis Waitley

Failure, Teacher, End

Man is not made for defeat.
Ernest Hemingway

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Life, Happiness, Struggle

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway

Made, Defeated, Destroyed

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
Napoleon Hill

Goal, Once, Accept

For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.
Wallis Simpson

Spirit, Gallant

There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
Plato

Best, Victory, Another

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.
Ernest Hemingway

War, Happen, Once

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.
Sun Tzu

War, Battle, After

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.
Abdul Kalam

Give, Problem, Allow

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
Sun Tzu

Good, Enemy, Old

Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.
Richard M. Nixon

Quit, Defeated, Finished

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