Rice’s Rule
It’s not important whether you win or lose but how you play the game.
This is the popular version of the last two lines of Grantland Rice’s poem Alumnus Football (1930):
For when the one Great Scorer comes to mark against your name
He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the game.
Rice was by all accounts an exceedingly decent man and a wonderful companion, as well as a great sportswriter. Most other people have taken a more jaundiced view of winning and losing. See for example Durocher’s Law and Lombardi’s Law. Then there is:
Sheetz’s Amendment
It’s not whether you win or lose but how you place the blame (in John Peers 1001 Logical Laws . . . 1979)
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