Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.
Quote of the Week 5
Background information:
He said "There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan. ...".
"While John F. Kennedy gets credit for saying, victory has a thousand fathers, people forget that he called it an old saying. It is actually during World War II that Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's foreign minister and his son-in-law as well, wrote in his diary: victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan."
Source: Origin of 'No Jack Kennedy' Comment Disputed (NPR)
Ciano's statement was probably influenced by Tacitus.
Tacitus’s law:
“Inquissima haec bellorum condicio est: prospera omnes sibi indicant; aduersa uni imputantur” (Agricola 27:1 - 98 AD) which roughly translates to "This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone."
Source: Quora.
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