Explaining Losing

Sunday, November 9, 2014 – Explaining Losing

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated. ~ Will Rogers

Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble. ~ John Madden

There are winners, there are losers and there are people who have not yet learned how to win. ~ Les Brown

There are days when it takes all you’ve got just to keep up with the losers. ~ Robert Orben

Without losers, where would the winners be? ~ Casey Stengel

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers. ~ Lord Acton

It is only losers that are prosecuted. ~ George Galloway

This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It’s authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys. ~ Thomas Frank

Hope is the raw material of losers. ~ Fernando Flores

What does it mean to be the best? It means you have to be better than the number two guy. But what gratification is there in that? He’s a loser – that’s why he’s number two. ~ Jarod Kintz

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty. ~ John Lennon

It’s easy to win. Anybody can win. ~ Philip K. Dick

There is nothing worse than having an enemy who is a total loser. It’s incredibly frustrating when seeking revenge against one, because you come to the realization that there is really nothing you can do to make the person’s life worse than it already is. They have nothing to take; there is no way to screw them over if you have been their victim. It’s maddening. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

All losers are romantics. It’s what keeps us from blowing our brains out. ~ Richard Kadrey

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Everyone is a loser. Winners are just losers with more patience. ~ George Hammond

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. ~ Elisabeth Bishop

The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own. ~ Bill Bradley

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once. ~ Samuel Butler

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

The first proof of a person’s incapacity to achieve is their endeavoring to fix the stigma of failure on others. ~ B. R. Hayden

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one wants to quit when he’s losing and no one wants to quit when he’s winning. ~ Richard Strauss

When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less. ~ Paul Brown

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. ~ Anais Nin

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose. ~ Charles Bukowski

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves. ~ William Graham Sumner

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. ~ Aldous Huxley

If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation. ~ Rose Kennedy

About the only time losing is more fun than winning is when you’re fighting temptation. ~ Tom Wilson

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight. ~ Marcus Aurelius

If at first you don’t succeed, find out if the loser gets anything. ~ Bill Lyon

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book. ~ Saul Bellow

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other, everything to gain. ~ Diane de Pointiers

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates. ~ Richard M. Nixon

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity are easy. Stay away from easy. ~ Scott Alexander

Southerners can never resist a losing cause. ~ Margaret Mitchell

After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down. ~ Barbara Cartland

I don’t gamble, because winning a hundred dollars doesn’t give me great pleasure. But losing a hundred dollars pisses me off. ~ Alex Trebek

Losing feels worse than winning feels good. ~ Vin Scully

The pain comes from knowing that we have never been safe, and therefore will never be safe again. It comes from knowing we can never be so ignorant again. It comes from knowing we can never be children again. Losing innocence. Remembering heaven. That was the essence of hell. ~ John Jakes

If you’re old and you lose, they say you’re outmoded. If you’re young and you lose, they say you’re green. So don’t lose. ~ Terry Brennan

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~ Ludwig Borne

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren’t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom. ~ Bertolt Brecht

If you are losing a tug of war with a tiger, give him the rope before he gets to your arm. You can always buy a new rope. ~ Max Gunther

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist. ~ Queen Victoria

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. ~ Michael de Montaigne

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13, May 3, 1919

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. ~ Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. ~ William Saroyan

We are all failures – at least, the best of us are. ~ Sir James Matthew Barrie

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake. ~ Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

There really is no such thing as failure. There is only the rearrangement of plans and surrender of ego. ~ Susan Falter-Barns

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on. ~ Robert Frost

I never lost a game. I just ran out of time. ~ Bobby Layne

If you learn from a loss you have not lost. ~ Austin O’Malley

It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies. ~ Arthur Calwell

Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong. ~ Henry Ward Beecher