quotations about losing
Losing is part of the game. If you never lose, you are never truly tested, and never forced to grow.
DAVID SIRLIN
Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion
Losing ... really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck? If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.
LANCE ARMSTRONG
Every Second Counts
If you learn from a loss you have not lost.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Winners have to absorb losses.
ICE-T
Men's Health, Dec. 2005
All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
"The War Universe"
I would prefer even to lose with honor than to win by cheating.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
Losing is only temporary and not all encompassing. You must simply study it, learn from it, and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self-control to forget about it.
JOHN WOODEN
attributed, 1001 Motivational Messages and Quotations for Athletes and Coaches
We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.
VINCE LOMBARDI
attributed, Vince Lombardi's Winning Ways
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"One Art"
The trouble with being a good sport is that you have to lose to prove it.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.
QUEEN VICTORIA
letter to A. J. Balfour, Dec. 1899
That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
RICHARD BACH
The Bridge Across Forever
Sometimes you lose. Nothing you can do but admit it.
SARAH DESSEN
Along for the Ride
For every winner, there's a loser. And that person didn't really need to lose. They just didn't understand the game plan.
BUZZ ALDRIN
"What I've Learned", Esquire, January 2003
Losing would be painful, but not as painful as knowing there was something else you could've done.
JOE TRIPPI
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Winning isn't everything to me, but it's a close second. Losing isn't something that I can just brush off and fake a smile to hide my frustration. It's that will and determination that I hope will get me where I want to go.
DALE EARNHARDT, JR.
Driver #8
Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.
VINCE LOMBARDI
attributed, Baseball's First Inning
Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Rhoda Fleming
A man seems never to know what anything means till he has lost it; and this I suppose is the reason why losses--vanishing away of things--are among the teachings of this world of shadows.
ORVILLE DEWEY
"On Human Nature", The Works of Orville Dewey
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance