History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.
Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.
It is impossible not to recognise the Long March as one of the great triumphs of men against odds and men against nature. While the Red Army was unquestionably in forced retreat, its toughened veterans reached their planned objective with moral and political will as strong as ever. . . Their conviction had helped turn what might have been a terrible defeat into an arrival in triumph.
A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.
You will learn to defeat the enemy.
Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.
We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.
Deadline for Iraqi withdrawal is legislating defeat.
It seemed to me singularly ill-contrived for the British government to be going to war with Hitler when Hitler might have been about to attack the Russians, and even more ill-contrived that, when Hitler did attack the Russians, he had already defeated the French army. What I'm saying is that the war shouldn't have been started in September 1939. . . from the point of view of Britain, the war was really not a good thing and I would regard it as, in effect, a defeat.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
I love to win, but I love to lose almost as much. I love the thrill of victory, and I also love the challenge of defeat.
One can only savor the victory if he has felt the bitter defeat.
There are 1,000 lessons in defeat. But only one in victory.
When you walk with Jesus, defeat turns into victory.
In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.
Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win without art is somehow less than a victory; less, almost, than a beautiful defeat. In football, the romantic and the pragmatist are ever at war in the same breast. Beauty, it must be understood here, is not Barcelona's aim but their method. And last night they were ready to use this method at every opportunity - quick-fire passing of wit and purpose in the danger areas, seeking always to produce an unlooked-for player in a position of threat.
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
Defeat furnishes good material to the poets and the artists, but none of us care to have the glory of the conquered apply to us.
Early withdrawal from Iraq would result in unarguably, defeat and humiliation for the United States. There's no question. We would be defeated by definition. We would be humiliated in that defeat. I don't think there's any other way to argue it. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is a separate question.