Sunday, October 7, 2018 – Losing This Time
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
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
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
Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty. ~ John Lennon
Everyone is a loser. Winners are just losers with more patience. ~ George Hammond
Hope is the raw material of losers. ~ Fernando Flores
All losers are romantics. It’s what keeps us from blowing our brains out. ~ Richard Kadrey
The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own. ~ Bill Bradley
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
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
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
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
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
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
Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. ~ William Saroyan
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
Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on. ~ Robert Frost
Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. ~ Felix Frankfurter
The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. ~ Raymond Chandler
Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because we actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe. ~ Marcus Cole
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. ~ Oscar Wilde
In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness, with what is strange. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all. ~ William Goodman
Life’s not fair. It’s only short. ~ Hank Ryan
You could say to the universe this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn’t it? Sorry. ~ Terry Pratchett
What is hateful to thyself do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. ~ Hillel
Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth. ~ H. L. Mencken
I never thought about losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. ~ Muhammad Ali
Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. ~ William E. Gladstone
The central conservative truth is that it is culture not politics that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center. ~ Jon Stewart
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. ~ Michael Joseph Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays
Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand. ~ Baruch Spinoza
Just Above Sunset 