#defeat

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#grief #hard #life #newborn #room

For after all, why do we go on fighting? If we die for democracy then we must be one of the democracies. Let the rest fight with us, if that is the case. But the most powerful of them, the only one that could save us, chooses to bide its time. Very good. That is its right. But by so doing, that democracy signifies that we are fighting for ourselves alone. And we go on fighting despite the assurance that we have lost the war. Why, then, do we go on dying? Out of despair? But there is no despair. You know nothing about defeat if you think there is room in it for despair. There is a verity that is higher than the pronouncements of the intelligence. There is a thing which pierces and governs us and which cannot be grasped by the intelligence. A tree has no language. We are a tree. There are truths which are evident, though not to be put into words. I do not die in order to obstruct the path of the invasion, for there is no shelter upon which I can fall back with those I love. I do not die to preserve my honor, since I deny that my honor is at stake, and I challenge the jurisdiction of my judge. Nor do I die out of desperation. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#despair #war #intelligence

There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory. ↗

— Alison Goodman

#defeat #victory #character

Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed. ↗

— Wally Lamb

#oppression #defeat

The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. ↗

— Andrew Carnegie

#compromise #compromised #contradictory #defeat #men

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#before #defeat #had #never #victory

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

— Winston Churchill

#defeat #difficult #less #more #problems

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#defeat #final #never #single

We experience problem-solving sessions as war zones, we view competing ideas as enemies, and we use problems as weapons to blame and defeat opposition forces. No wonder we can't come up with real lasting solutions! ↗

— Margaret J. Wheatley

#come #competing #defeat #experience #forces

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope. ↗

— Bern Williams

#defeat #hope #never #night #problem