Comic Books
"Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again..." said a shadow at the window. "...and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time...
But the wolf...the wolf only needs enough luck to find you ONCE. "
But the wolf...the wolf only needs enough luck to find you ONCE. "
— Through the Woods, "In Conclusion"
Fan Works
"Why would I want you to come after me? Were I to desire your life, I would simply activate a group of my men from anywhere in the globe, and send them against you. You might triumph over one or many, but eventually one would kill you. This is a certainty, Detective."
— Ra's Al Ghul, Dance with the Demons
"A 'great one-shot wonder,' am I? Perhaps I won't need more than two shots to achieve my objectives. Will I, Diana? Will I?"
— Badra, A Force of Four
Film - Live-Action
"If we blow this today, there ain't no tomorrow."
—Buckaroo Banzai, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Literature
"If the Board had not authorized and I had refused to cooperate with this, Dr O'Brien and I would both be dead, along with the rest of the Auditors. Cassie Brewer would be dead, too, and the Host unbound, and the government in the hands of the Sleeper's Inner Temple by sunrise tomorrow. You and Johnny might have survived, if you had the wits to get on board the first flight out and not look back. This was much too close for comfort, Mr Howard. We could have kept fighting, but we would have had to win every battle; they only have to win once."
— The Senior Auditor, The Delirium Brief
"Yes," said the baby, opening its eyes. "The Doctor succeeded. This time."
— Doctor Who, Past Doctor Adventures: Festival of Death
"I would lie if I said that [this match] displeased me, but know that I don't play for sport. And keep in mind that unlike you, I only have to win once."
— Vetherr, the Enemy of Man, after congratulating his foe Zarkan, god of Adversity, The Fortress of the Black Cauldron
"Good for you. Now survive the next one."
— Thomas Price, InCryptid
Live-Action TV
"That's the tragic thing about being the Saviour, you have to keep saving people. But once you're off the chessboard, everything falls apart. All those 'happy endings' turn to dust, and your life means nothing."
Tabletop Games
"Slowly, indisputably, the incursions of Chaos are becoming more common. Though hundreds of invasions and raids occur each year, the full-scale wars that permanently scar the memories of mortals are growing in number and and frequency. To date, each of these major incursions has been stymied and eventually thrown back by the combined military might of Men, Elves and Dwarfs, but at terrible cost. The men of the North number in their millions, and they breed strong and true. Furthermore, their daemonic allies can never truly die, and return and again to assail the lands of the living. There will come a day when there are no more armies to oppose them."
— Warhammer: Warriors Of Chaos Army Book (7th edition)
"By all means, try and stop 'em. I won't stand in your way. Beat them back, chop them down and Hold the Line, carry the day. Cover yourself in glory or in guts, it makes no difference to me. Or to the dead, for that matter. You're just postponing the inevitable, lad. Mark my words, they'll get us all in the end."
— Black Ruprecht, veteran of the Vampire Wars, Warhammer: Vampire Counts Army Book (8th edition)
Web Original
”Well, it’s also realistic that the bad guys win in the end, because all good can ever do is hold the line; only evil can make things stop through their victory.”
”That’s not strictly true, but things have to be SO bad for the inverse to be true that, happily, most of us have little experience with it. But consider, oh… slavery and lynching. These were both the way of things for entirely too many years. Evil was holding the line — it was good that was looking for soft spots and punching as hard as they could, trying to make inroads.
”That it was way worse before doesn’t mean it’s perfect now. But it IS worth remembering how very far we’ve come, and how much we’ve actually won, as we sit and whine about how ineffective our leaders are at addressing problems. That they haven’t fixed EVERYTHING yet doesn’t mean they haven’t fixed ANYTHING.”
— GuestPoster, replying directly to the above quote by Ross, deconstructing this trope.
Western Animation
"Let me give you punks some wisdom I picked up as a boss on Cybertron. It ain't who wins the most fights, just who wins the last one!"
— Thunderhoof, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)
