QUOTES ON VICTORY

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)




A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha



We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win.

Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)



Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Horace Mann (1796 - 1859), address at Antioch College, 1859



One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)



Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

Lois McMaster Bujold, "Shards of Honor", 1986



There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos, 1986



Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), 'Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13,' May 3, 1919



The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.

Martina Navratilova (1956 - )



Victory belongs to the most persevering.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)



Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.

Polybius (205 BC - 118 BC), History



Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.

Pyrrhus (319 BC - 272 BC), from Plutarch, Lives



Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.

Ralph W. Sockman



The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting.

Sun-tzu (~400 BC), The Art of War. Planning a Siege



Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Sun-tzu (~400 BC), The Art of War. Strategic Assessments



Far better it is 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 the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)