Winston Churchill, on determination and staying the course:

It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months--if it takes years--they do it.

Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago, and now, is that appearances are often very deceptive, and, as Kipling well says, we must "…meet with Triumph and Disaster...and treat those two impostors just the same...." 

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period--I am addressing myself to the School--surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson:  never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.  Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

(from an address given at Harrow School, October 29, 1941)

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