It isn't until you begin to fight in your own cause that you (a) become really committed to winning, and (b) become a genuine ally of other people struggling for their freedom.

- Robin Morgan

Human fallibility being what it is, victory and truth do not always go together. Therefore, if you have to always win, you can't always be true.

- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

You've got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

- Arthur Ashe

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher

- Jonathan Kozol

You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.

- Marian Wright Edelman

Conquer, but don't triumph.

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

- Theodore Roosevelt

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.

- Dianne Feinstein

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

If I am not worth the wooing, I am surely not worth the winning.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.

- Harriet Woods