Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
True courage is not avoiding failure but continuing after losing. Bearing defeat without giving up is the hardest test of character.
In plain terms
True courage is staying strong after you lose.
What can you take from it?
Courage means keeping hope after losing.

Where it applies

  • sports
  • career setback
  • personal struggle

Putting it to work

  • keeping going
  • learning from failure
  • practicing resilience

Questions to consider

  • Is winning more important than how you handle losing?
  • How do you rebuild after failure?

Another view

Some argue that avoiding defeat through planning is also courageous.

More from Robert G. Ingersoll

  1. The great question is not, who died right, but who lived right? There is infinitely more responsibility in living than in dying. The moment of death is the mos…

    Permalink to quote #195
  2. The hands that help are far better than the lips that pray.

    Permalink to quote #197
  3. The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splendid wo…

    Permalink to quote #194

Related quotes

  1. Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the…

    Muhammad AliMuhammad Ali quote #83
  2. There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

    Swami VivekanandaSwami Vivekananda quote #159
  3. Adversity discourages none but contemptible peoples.

    Benito JuarezBenito Juarez quote #5