Knowing when to fold 'em in Literature.
- Alpha and Omega: Having seen the attempts to stop the Temple from being rebuilt backfire, the Grand Mufti calls off further attempts, reasoning that, for whatever reason, Allah intends for the project to go forward.
- Animorphs:
- In The Invasion, when Visser Three was killing Elfangor, Jake picked up a metal pipe and tried to stop him. His friends talked him out of it, pointing out they would only get themselves killed.
- At the end of the final battle, after it becomes clear that Tom plans to kill Visser One using his own personal Blade ship, the visser essentially surrenders to the kids once they arrive on the bridge.
- Once the Controllers on-board the Pool ship realize what has happened, they surrender to the kids in exchange for amnesty and a chance to acquire the morphing power (to permanently morph animals and move away from parasitism). The surrendered Yeerks got off quite well, all things considered.
- In The Capture this is revealed to be a major tenet of Yeerk psychology: Yeerks will give up when the odds don't favor them rather that fight against impossible odds as humans do. This semi-defeatist mindset is presented to explain away the Bond Villain Stupidity of Jake's Yeerk, but later books are consistent with this, as it comes up again in Visser and The Answer.
- Atlas Shrugged examines this trope with Dagny's obstinate refusal to abandon Taggart Transcontinental as a lost cause, despite all the evidence of its decline and predictions of its imminent demise (which turn out to be true). Dagny is eventually convinced to leave it all behind, but Eddie Willers never learns to leave the dying railroad/dying world and presumably dies with it.
- In the Cherub Series, this is part of the recruiting process for CHERUB. The potential recruit will be given an extremely difficult task. Succeeding anyway is obviously good, but what they're actually looking for is the ability for recruits to assess a situation and determine if it's a bad idea to try in the first place. In James's case they do it twice, first they have him fight another teenager who's trained in martial arts and, after getting beaten in the first round, he gives up. After that they give him a task to retrieve a brick from the bottom of a pool, knowing he has a fear of water, which he refuses to do. In both instances this was what they wanted.
- Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life has a garden that stays the same distance away no matter how long you travel towards it. It is bespelled so as to be inaccessible to people trying to reach it, so those trying to enter only succeeded when they had given up on doing so.
- This trope may be the single great reason Ciaphas Cain has survived as long as he has: in a universe where pretty much everything wants to eat your face and your enemies are without number, he is fully capable of recognizing when it's time to get the hell out of Dodge. Two incidents in particular are noteworthy. In both Caves of Ice and Cain's Last Stand, Cain is going head-to-head with the enemies of the Imperium in a desperate defensive battle... right up until he finds out that the Necrons have entered the fray, at which point he immediately and completely retreats. Even the Inquisition representative who debriefs him admits that he just would've gotten the entire regiment killed if he'd tried to hold his ground.
- In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book Big Shot, after Greg's basketball team has a disastrous season, Susan tries to convince Coach Patel to keep going by entering a Second Chance Tournament. Mr. Patel tells Susan that Greg's team is hopeless at basketball and he's not willing to put them through any more misery. Susan won't let it go and enters the team any ways and becomes the coach.
- Dispatches, a Vietnam War memoir by reporter Michael Herr:
- The photographer Tim Page was prepared to go to dangerous places to get pictures, and suffered a series of increasingly severe injuries. He decided that his luck had run out after getting a piece of shrapnel in his brain. (He went from “going to die” to “live, but paralysed on his left side” to a full recovery).
- None of Herr’s friends wanted to stay too long, because “we all knew that if you stayed too long you became one of those poor bastards who had to have a war on all the time, and where was that?”
- A Doctor Who short story, Useless Things, involves an alien invasion arrive on Earth, notice a police box on the street corner, realize that this is the calling card of the Doctor, who has a history of soundly defeating alien invaders like themselves, and wisely decide to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible. It's subverted; minutes after they leave, workmen arrive and remove what turns out to be an actual police box, the last of its kind to be removed in Britain.
- The mountain in The Farthest-Away Mountain, which would always stay the same distance away as long as you kept going toward it. You had to turn around and go the other way to get there.
- In Meredith Ann Pierce's The Firebringer Trilogy, the greatest and most legendary figure in the history of the unicorns is the princess Halla. Four hundred years before the events of the books Halla's people's lands were invaded by wyverns, first in secret, then in open warfare. When it becomes clear that the wyverns are too dangerous to continue fighting (they have poisonous stings and what amounts to armor under the skin), Halla orders the unicorns to withdraw and leave their lands to the wyverns until the time comes that the unicorns are capable of meeting them in more evenly matched combat. The main character of the Trilogy's been raised on her story all his life, but still can't quite stomach the part of the legend where Halla orders the retreat for the sake of survival.
- The Great Gatsby: Jay Gatsby's Fatal Flaw and the downside of his own great capacity for Hope is his inability to move on. He continues to cling to the hope that Daisy will one day be with him so that he can have the Happy Ending he had wanted for so long. It doesn't happen.
- A mark of a good officer in the Honor Harrington series is knowing when it's best to do this. A clear line is drawn between knowing when to fold 'em, knowing when you can't fold and must fight until the end, and doing the latter to avoid being seen as a coward for doing the former.
- A specific instance occurs in Echoes of Honor. A surprise Havenite attack catches the less than competent Rear Admiral Elvis Santino completely flat-footed. His operations officer, Andrea Jaruwalski, tries to get him to fold, surrendering the system they don't need in the face of a vastly superior force. Santino responds by relieving Jaruwalski of her position and sending her away with enough of a black spot on her record to sabotage her career, then calling up his command to meet the Havenite attack. Santino's command is mostly destroyed while Jaruwalski eventually has her career salvaged with the help of Honor Harrington herself.
- Conflicts with the Solarian League, in which the Manticoran forces are so much more advanced technologically they can Curb Stomp vastly more numerous Solarian forces with ease, often feature the Manticorans trying to get the Solly commanders to realize they need to do this. The success rate varies depending on how Too Dumb to Live the arrogant Solarian commanders are.
- The Hunt for Red October. The Soviet admiral orders the fleet to avoid harassing the Americans after a heavy cruiser is subjected to a mock attack. He knows the Soviet navy is wasting time that is needed to find the Red October and will be destroyed if the Americans decide to attack for real. The American admiral later says: "they make the first move, we up the ante, they just plain fold."
- Jingo appears to feature this, with Vetinari surrendering to Klatchian forces and giving them huge advantages in exchange for letting them all go home, with the treaty to be signed on the island of Leshp. A week or so later, as Vetinari is on trial for treason, he innocuously asks what treaty they're talking about, since it needed to be signed on Leshp, which has just sunk back under the ocean.
- In the Left Behind book Glorious Appearing, a good deal of the Global Community armed forces not situated in the Holy Land at the time of the battle of Armageddon, who realize that they are without any resources coming from New Babylon to make sure they're paid (all because said city is destroyed), decide that they might as well quit even though they face a court martial for doing so.
- Moby-Dick: Captain Boomer lost his arm to Moby Dick, but unlike Ahab is smart enough to realize going for round two isn't a good idea and just moved on.
- The children's book Nuddy Ned has the title character decide to run around naked in public, with his parents desperately trying to get their son to put clothes on. In the end, they concede that they can't get their son to change his opinion on nudity and even start joining him in running around naked.
- Pale: Marie Durocher's binding class, in which she releases a dangerous bound Other that threatens to kill all the students and leaves it to her apprentice to restrain it, is intended to teach this lesson:Durocher: I told you the right answer early on. If you face something this big and you’re not certain of what it is and how to deal with it, you should question how you got to that position. The first rule of self preservation, even if you’re as capable as I, Mr. Belanger, Mr. Sunshine, Mr. Bristow, or Mr. Musser are, is that you should run when outmatched.
- Professor Moriarty Series: Sherlock Holmes's story about throwing Moriarty over Reichenbach Falls is a complete lie, which he made up due to how Moriarty brought three armed henchmen to his showdown with Holmes and gave him the choice between fighting all of them or faking both of their deaths.
- RWBY: Before the Dawn reveals a strong connection of this trope with Run or Die: once Beacon was attacked by the huge Grimm army, Nolan decided he was better off fleeing the place. As a result, he's the Sole Survivor of his team, as the other three died in the battle, leading to strong Survivor's Guilt.
- Sandokan: The titular character will try and avoid a battle he can't win, and retreat when he gets his ass kicked, if only to return in force and take revenge.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events: Violet realizes that their climb to the ascending hot air balloon in The Vile Village is dangerous and forces her siblings back to the ground so they won't get hurt, even though the Quagmires are on the balloon and it is designed never to return to ground.
- In Shaman Blues, when the Old Ones see Vulture basically blow the afterlife's door wide open to rescue Witkacy, they wisely decide to give up on attempting to claim their "prize" and retreat.
- Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Owen Orzell in Home Free knew that he had no chance of winning once the Vigilantes caught him. As bonus points, he reveals that he gambles, tries to be very careful not to get addicted, and so he would clearly understand this trope very well.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Roughly three hundred of years before the start of the series, King Torrhen of House Stark took enough time to raise his army (the North is huge) that got a good look at how Aegon Targaryen was curb-stomping all the Andal and Ironborn kingdoms to the south of his, and wisely bent the knee as soon as Aegon the Conqueror turned his attention towards the North's army. He is forever remembered as "The King Who Knelt", but not a single Northerner gets toasted by Aegon's dragons. Surrendering also meant that the Starks got to keep their rule of the North (albeit as "Lord Paramount" instead of King), this allowed the North to go through less cultural upheaval than the other kingdoms. Pretty fair price to pay, all told.
- The Targaryen conquest of the Vale also ended like this. Unlike the North, the Arryns took up arms against Aegon at first, thinking that the mountainous terrain of the Vale would protect them, but they didn't account for the dragons, who could and did fly anywhere. And the King of the Vale at the time, Ronnel Arryn, happened to be a little boy. So when Queen Visenya rode Vhagar to the Eyrie and found little Ronnel, she offered to let him fly atop Vhagar. Ronnel's mother, who had just returned from organizing an army, saw her son with a huge dragon by side, and decided to yield to Aegon immediately. Ronnel is today remembered as "The King Who Flew".
- Happened to Aegon himself a little later on, though, with Dorne. His attempts to conquer it went nowhere, and his beloved sister-wife Rhaenys went missing. Eventually Dorne sent a letter to him. Whatever the contents, he immediately stopped trying to burn them down immediately, and an uneasy peace was brokered between Dorne and the rest of Westeros.
- During the Dance of the Dragons, Queen Rhaenyra took King's Landing, and had Queen Alicent Hightower brought to her in chains. Alicent suggested if Rhaenyra wanted a crown, when she was her father's named choice of heir, then they could split Westeros in two (Alicent's kids got the "good" parts, obviously). Rhaenyra offered another choice — give up or die. Alicent chose to give up.
- Not knowing when to do this caused the death of Aegon II. Having killed Rhaenyra and taken the crown, his army was depleted and losing, and whatever loyalists he had couldn't get there in time. Some of his councilors suggested surrendering, and hoping Rhaenyra's son Aegon would let him join the Night's Watch. According to the records, Aegon II was giving it serious consideration... until his mother, Queen Alicent spoke up and suggested that he instead started cutting young Aegon to pieces as a warning. Aegon II decided that's a fantastic idea, but before he could do it, caught a sudden case of dead, because his councilors had gotten so fed up of the whole mess, and poisoned him themselves.
- Knowing when to do this but your enemies not giving a damn anymore spelled the end for Aegon's ally, Sir Criston Cole. Knowing his army was completely outnumbered and the war was lost, Cole asked for a retreat so his men would be unharmed, and he would duel his enemy commanders in a Trial by Combat. Unfortunately for Cole, said enemies completely hated his guts and largely blamed him for the entire war. Cole was denied his knightly death courtesy of being riddled by arrows, and hundreds of said men were slaughtered in the attempted retreat.
- During the regency of Aegon III, Baela Targaryen proved to be a handful for the regents. When they're worried about the line of succession (since Aegon was quite young, and there's a Decadent Court around, and no other male heirs they knew of), they thought maybe it's time to marry Baela off. She rejected their first choice of husband, and was locked up. The next morning, it turned out she's escaped, and by the time they found her, she's already married her cousin, Alyn Velaryon. At this point, the regents threw up their hands and decided it's best just to act like that was the plan all along.
- Normally, the Free Folk/Wildlings refuse to kneel to anyone. When their King Beyond the Wall, Mance Rayder, is defeated, his sister-in-law, Val, chooses to kneel when she is taken prisoner, deciding she wants to live.
- The Diane Duane novel Spock's World, combined with the story to which it is a sequel, teaches this. The Big Bad begins brooding over things not going precisely according to plan. The attempt to fix this undoes all accomplishments from the last time and the Big Bad ends up in prison.
- In the Star Trek Expanded Universe novel Kobayashi Maru, this is essentially Sulu's resolution. He decides the whole thing is a trap and elects not to enter the Neutral Zone.
- In This Immortal, the reasoning behind Conrad's leaving his identity as Konstantin Karaghiosis and the Returnist movement behind was that there comes a point when one's achieved what one could achieve and it's time to move on. Dos Santos and especially Diane, who figures out Conrad's former identity, disagree.
- The Thrawn books, by Timothy Zahn:
- The Thrawn Trilogy:
- In the backstory, Pellaeon was the only Imperial commander at the Battle of Endor with the presence of mind to order a retreat. Despite several higher-ranking officers still being alive at Endor, Pellaeon's order was obeyed, because those higher-ranking officers were too panicked to countermand him. At the end, when Thrawn dies, he does the same.
- Thrawn knows when a battle has been lost and, unlike most Imperial commanders, withdraws without wasting his men — sure, he's got reserves, but why spend them without a need? Pellaeon, back during the Battle of Endor, had found himself to be the highest-ranked survivor and had ordered the retreat.Thrawn: "You were expecting, perhaps, that I'd order an all-out attack? That I would seek to cover our defeat in a frenzy of false and futile heroics?"
Pellaeon: "Of course not."
Thrawn: "We haven't been defeated, Captain. Merely slowed down a bit." - This then comes up again at the end of the trilogy. Once Thrawn is assassinated, Pellaeon realizes the Imperial forces will not be able to defeat the New Republic without Thrawn's tactical genius. So he orders a retreat rather than needlessly waste lives.
- Hand of Thrawn: Pellaeon is the one to look at the Imperial Remnant and decide to make peace with the New Republic, ending the war.
- The Thrawn Trilogy:
- The smarter villains in the Expanded Universe have this as part of their modus operandi. Zsinj in Solo Command even mentions avoiding "throwing good money after bad" when invoking this trope.
- The novel The Bacta War has a variant. When told that his defeat is now inevitable by Wedge Antilles, the commander of the Lusankya refuses to give in, and decides to Colony Drop his ship on a nearby planet as a final fuck you to the New Republic. One of his bridge officers then shoots him, takes command, and declares that he's willing to surrender if the Republic fleet is willing to tow the wreck of his ship into a higher orbit so that it won't crash of its own accord.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love Lazarus Long ascribes his survival for over 2300 years largely to the practical application of this kind of common sense, and the one time he fails at it is the time Death nearly catches up to him.
- Tress of the Emerald Sea: Faced with the protagonist, a pirate crew, and a newly empowered Hoid, the Sorceress decides to leave the planet. Hoid notes that the odds were still in her favour, but she didn't get to be centuries old by taking unnecessary risks.
- This is the hat of the Raven Guard in Warhammer 40,000. In the Horus Heresy novel Deliverance Lost, Corax specifically states that because his legion is smaller than the others, they would not survive a mass frontal assault on the traitor forces, and must rely on hit and run attacks.
- A continuing theme in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series is that sometimes you have to abandon an ambition in order to achieve other ambitions and/or live a fulfilling life. The main character of "Bitten", the first book, spends her character development deciding which of her conflicting desires to pursue and which to abandon. In later books, the trope is more subtle, but still reoccurs often.
- Teen Power Inc.: The villain of Photo Finish is perfectly willing to try to kill Tom, but retreats with a cry of rage after Tom throws evidence out the window, into the crowded streets below, meaning that killing Tom won't hide the culprit's identity. Unfortunately for said culprit, the police are guarding the exit.
- In L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a subtext — the Lion is deeply afraid of the Kelidas roaming the forest, and does his best to avoid them... but the fact that they're twice his size and have the heads of tigers and the bodies of bears suggests that avoiding them might be the smart thing to do until you can find a better way of handling it, which the Lion does with the help of Dorothy and her friends.
