Top 100 War Defeat Quotes
#1. While no man in his right mind would advocate sending our ground forces into continental China, and such was never given a thought, the new situation did urgently demand a drastic revision of strategic planning if our political aim was to defeat this new enemy as we had defeated the old.
Douglas MacArthur
#2. With Midway as the turning point, the fortunes of war appeared definitely to shift from our own to the Allied side. The defeat taught us many lessons and impelled our Navy, for the first time since the outbreak of war, to indulge in critical self-examination.
Mitsuo Fuchida
#3. War is a dangerous teacher and physical victory leads often to a moral defeat.
Sri Aurobindo
#4. Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.
Conrad Black
#5. War is grounded in the notion of triumph and defeat. It is zero-sum.
Bruce Jackson
#6. Other wars end eventually in victory, defeat or exhaustion, but the war between men and women goes on forever.
Alison Lurie
#7. I'm not so much against the war as I am for a Vietnamese victory. I'm not so much for peace as for a U.S. defeat.
Bill Ayers
#8. Some victories are merely defeat wearing the wrong clothing
Kiersten White
#9. In battle, it is not the strongest or the bravest or those with the greater numbers who win. Victory belongs to the side that best understands the price of defeat.
Shatrujeet Nath
#10. Barrayar is bred in my bones. I cannot shake it, no matter how far I travel. This struggle, God knows, has no honor in it. But exile, for no other motive than ease - that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#11. 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
#12. European merchants supply the best weaponry, contributing to their own defeat.
Saladin
#13. Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
Adrienne Rich
#14. Love conquers all. Let Love then smile at our defeat.
Virgil
#15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: - let such a one be dismissed!
Sun Tzu
#16. In a similar way, The Art of War pinpoints anger and greed as fundamental causes of defeat.
Sun Tzu
#17. We must take the long view - every defeat is a victory in a war of attrition.
Nathanael West
#18. For Tempus ... was a dozen storm gods' avatar; no army he sanctified could know defeat; no war he fought could not be won. Combat was life to him; he fought like the gods themselves ...
Janet Morris
#19. The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.
John T. Flynn
#20. Do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat
Sun Tzu
#22. As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#23. We are leaders. War is what happens when we fail. Or are pushed into failure by the rash and the foolish. Victory is better than defeat, but ... not by much.
Joe Abercrombie
#24. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle and lose the war,
Benjamin Netanyahu
#25. If one thinks only of winning, a sordid victory will be worse than a defeat. For the most part, it becomes a squalid defeat.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
#26. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory is won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
Sun Tzu
#27. Through every generation of the human race there has been a constant war, a war with fear. Those who have the courage to conquer it are made free and those who are conquered by it are made to suffer until they have the courage to defeat it, or death takes them.
Alexander The Great
#28. In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.
Winston S. Churchill
#29. To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.
Ludwig Von Mises
#30. Our brave men and women have made many sacrifices in just wars to defeat the forces of evil. We have exported our greatest values: freedom and opportunity, which have lifted millions out of poverty. At home, these values allow Americans to use their God-given potential and make their dreams reality.
Marco Rubio
#31. War, in some ways, is merciful to men. It makes them heroes if they are the victors. If they are the vanquished - they do not live to see their homes taken, their wives widowed. But if you are a woman - you must live through defeat...
Samhita Arni
#32. LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem - a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
Ambrose Bierce
#33. The battle of Iwo Island has been won. The United States Marines by their individual and collective courage have conquered a base which is as necessary to us in our continuing forward movement toward final victory as it was vital to the enemy in staving off ultimate defeat.
Chester W. Nimitz
#34. Attack and defence, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man.
Richard Wagner
#35. Floyd did not accept the blame for his defeat. He blamed his fellow general Henry Wise for not committing some of his regiments to the battle. Wise reacted to the charge by calling Floyd "that bullet-hit son of a bitch.
Clint Johnson
#36. Consider, for instance, the recent war in Vietnam in which the United States was driven not by any realistic economic or political interest but by the overwhelming need to defeat atheistic communism.
Ernest Becker
#37. The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.
Jeffrey Sachs
#38. We will direct every resource at our command - every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war - to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network.
George W. Bush
#39. I was born in Vienna on November 7, 1929, eleven years after the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart following its defeat in World War I.
Eric Kandel
#40. Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat.
Vo Nguyen Giap
#41. Every day there is a war inside your mind: A war between you and yourself! One side of you may defeat the other side of you! But you must know that your winning side might fail in the real world! Always be ready to give a chance immediately to your losing side, to your defeated idea!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#42. And so the afternoon stretched on, and Ezbon toasted their imminent defeat to the dregs.
C.N. Faust
#43. Theirs was a tug-of-war and neither could let go. Both felt the burn and still wouldn't let go. Some might call it a game for neither could admit defeat.
Donna Lynn Hope
#44. I've often observed that men and women who were young children during these years [of defeat in war] have a certain seriousness about them; there was too little laughter in their childhoods.
Arthur Golden
#45. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.
Douglas MacArthur
#46. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.
Sun Tzu
#47. That's what any committed patriot would do: Fight to the last. Defeat your enemy at any cost; then hope you have enough left to rebuild.
Randolph D. Calverhall
#48. The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands
Sun Tzu
#49. Your generation and mine have had very little real experience; we've been severed from the direct experience of war by some very good things. By the end of the draft, and by the defeat in Vietnam.
Michael Ignatieff
#50. The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker.
Criss Jami
#51. Desert Storm was a war which involved the massive use of air power and a victory achieved by the U.S. and multinational air force units. It was also the first war in history in which air power was used to defeat ground forces.
Merrill McPeak
#52. Being Americans, we prosecute wars to win them, not to have reasonable response, not to have appropriate levels of retaliation. Our theory is you start bombing our cities; we're going to defeat you and make it impossible.
Newt Gingrich
#53. This is the moment of your defeat; you have just put in the last nails in the coffin of communism.
Lech Walesa
#54. A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.
Leo Tolstoy
#55. He'd thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little ... and that, more than anything - more than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or his neck stretched on a rope - scared him out of his wits.
V.S. Carnes
#56. A defeat in war is not the greatest of all evils; but when the defeat has been inflicted by enemies who are not worthy of you, then the calamity is doubled.
Aeschines
#57. Business is war! Its leaders are strategic commanders, who boldly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - and who perform other acts of derring-do. This kind of talk sounds great in the boardroom, and, for that matter, in the bookstore, where dozens of authors counsel would-be corporate warriors.
Nathan Myhrvold
#58. To defeat Islamic extremist terrorism, we must put them on defense. If they are at war against us - which they have declared - we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them.
Rudy Giuliani
#59. ISIS is winning the propaganda war. They are recruiting people, including Americans, to join them, with the promise that they are joining this great apocalyptic movement that is going to defeat the West.
Marco Rubio
#60. This world is so full of wars and hostilities.
All parties seek for allies to defeat enemies.
I support peace effort towards mastermind
which has caused men hostile to each other.
Toba Beta
#61. When both sides of a controversy revel in the defeat and humiliation of the other side, in fact they are on the same side: the side of war.
Charles Eisenstein
#62. The allies we gain by victory will turn against us upon the bare whisper of our defeat.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#63. Women's rights, men's rights-human rights-all are threatened by the everpresent specter of war so destructive now of human material and moral values as to render victory indistinguishable from defeat.
Rosika Schwimmer
#65. These are six ways of courting defeat, which must be carefully noted by the general who has attained a responsible post.
Sun Tzu
#66. Declare not war against your emotions, or prepare for the inevitable defeat!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#67. The issue of Palestine has been there since more than 60 years. But more important since 1967 when the war was, ended in the defeat of some Arab countries.
Al-Waleed Bin Talal
#68. It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.
Mark Lawrence
#69. The good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.
Sun Tzu
#70. The United States can certainly defeat North Vietnam, but the United States cannot defeat a guerrilla war which is being raged from a sanctuary through a pattern of penetration, intervention, evasion, which is very difficult for a technologically advanced country like the United States to combat.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
#71. Our armies were in as much chaos in victory as theirs in defeat.
Jefferson Davis
#72. All this is always for nothing," he says. "Don't you understand that yet? Every death is a pointless death; every battle should have been avoided. But if Edward can defeat the queen, and imprison her along with her husband, then it will indeed be over.
Philippa Gregory
#73. If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
#74. We did an evil thing, father."
"What do you think war is? We're men. Not boys swinging sticks at each other and pronouncing the evil wizard's defeat. We do what duty and honor demand, and often what we do is terrible.
Daniel Abraham
#75. Although one of the key justifications for the Vietnam war was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat was to produce nothing of the kind: apart from the fact that Cambodia and Laos became embroiled, the effects were essentially confined to Vietnam.
Martin Jacques
#76. I study the chessboard and concede defeat.
"You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.
Haruki Murakami
#77. Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.
Kenneth Waltz
#78. Conceal your dispositions, and your condition will remain secret, which leads to victory; show your dispositions, and your condition will become patent, which leads to defeat.
Sun Tzu
#79. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
John Steinbeck
#80. Moviewise, I would love to make the story of princess Erendira. She was a 16 year old princess/warrior who led her tribe in war against the Spanish around 1513. She almost defeated them, and the Tarascans were the only tribe the Aztecs couldn't defeat.
Tamara Feldman
#81. Grossly to oversimplify the contributions made by the three leading members of the Grand Alliance in the Second World War, if Britain had provided the time and Russia the blood necessary to defeat the Axis, it was America that produced the weapons.
Andrew Roberts
#82. In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad
Pamela Geller
#83. If no war in heaven, then defeat ain't misery.
Toba Beta
#84. The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.
Bill Ayers
#85. Are these soldiers really our enemy, or only the worst reflection of our own selves? ... We made them. We have to unmake them, not just defeat or kill them.
Kate Elliott
#86. These are the six ways of courting defeat - neglect to estimate the enemy's strength; want of authority; defective training; unjustifiable anger; nonobservance of discipline; failure to use picked men ...
Sun Tzu
#87. No compromise is possible and the victory of the democracies can only be complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan.
George C. Marshall
#89. Resort to force in the Great War (I) failed to bring tranquillity. Victory and defeat alike were sterile. That lesson the world should have learned.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#90. Unquestionably, victory or defeat in war is determined mainly by the military, political, economic and natural conditions on both sides. But not by these alone. It is also determined by each side's subjective ability in directing the war.
Mao Zedong
#91. War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests.
Germaine Greer
#92. In the art of war, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the approaching battles. But if you know only yourself and not the enemy, for every victory, there will also be defeat.
Emily Thorne
#93. There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.
Charles Lindbergh
#94. It could be worse,' Passini said respectfully. "There is nothing worse than war."
Defeat is worse."
I do not believe it," Passini said still respectfully. "What is defeat? You go home.
Ernest Hemingway,
#95. I didn't know it then, but my persistence, perseverance, and unwillingness to accept defeat when things looked all but hopeless were part of the very character traits I would need to make it through World War II alive.
Louis Zamperini
#96. Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, "them" and "us," victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.
Robert Fisk
#97. 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
#98. 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,
#99. Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat (at Bull Run), the magnitude of the disaster which it had entailed upon the United States. So short-lived has been the American Union, that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall.
William Howard Russell
#100. A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Alexis De Tocqueville
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