I said after 2006 that Republicans didn't just lose our majority, we lost our way. I mean, our party walked away from the principles that men in our national governing majority first in 1980 and again in 1994, and the American people walked away from us.
'Elections have consequences,' President Obama said, setting his new policy agenda just three days after taking office in 2009. Three elections later, the president's party has lost 70 House seats and 14 Senate seats. The job of Republicans now is to govern with the confidence that elections do have consequences, promptly passing the conservative reform the voters have demanded.
What we have, what we wish we had - ambitions fulfilled, ambitions disappointed, investments won, investments lost, elections won, elections lost - these things may occupy our attention, but they do not define us.
Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way; you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth.
We want perfect elections, not just any kind of elections. And it's the electoral commission that organizes elections in the country - this is what most people forget. We have an independent commission which, acccording to our constitution, is in charge of organizing elections.
Here's the deal: when conservatives lose elections, they change their strategy. When liberals lose elections, they want to change the rules.
Unfortunately, our sport has a weight limit, so every season, I have to lose weight. You just get tired of not eating the way you want to eat, so in the off-season, I'll binge and gain a few pounds and then have to lose them back.
Few serve truth in truth because only few have the pure will to be just, and of those again very few have the strength to be just.
The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. They cannot find for us the way again.
No one likes to lose. Having been a person who's lost elections, it's not a fun thing to do and some people react by denying the facts of the situation.
The Democrats have lost a thousand electoral seats in America in midterm elections, 2010, 2014. The people of this country are clearly willing to vote against Democrats. They are clearly willing to vote for Republicans. But when you get to the presidential election, it better be somebody that's not just part of the establishment. That's the message, and that's what they're not getting.
It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.
Everybody says that it takes a loss to lose and I think it did take a loss for us to lose in a sense. But overall, when we win games here at Duke, and we don't play well, we might as well have lost the game.
I know of a few multimillionaires who started trading with inherited wealth. In each case, they lost it all because they didn't feel the pain when they were losing. In those formative first few years of trading, they felt they could afford to lose. You're much better off going into the market on a shoestring, feeling that you can't afford to lose. I'd rather bet on somebody starting out with a few thousand dollars than on somebody who came in with millions.
The labour Party has lost the last four elections. If they lose another, they get to keep the liberal party.
Sometimes we have to lose our way to find out what we really want, for we often ignore our needs until we are lost.