"I've been in the struggle over seventy years - it doesn't bother me I may not win"
About this Quote
The intent is partly defensive, partly liberating. Lewis is inoculating himself against the most common insult hurled at radicals and movement people: that if you don't rack up clear wins, your life has been wasted. He preempts that accounting. By framing struggle as a decades-long commitment, he shifts the metric from outcome to participation, from the scoreboard to the spine. It's also a subtle rebuke to spectators who demand quick results from messy systems, then use disappointment as an excuse to disengage.
The subtext carries an actor's timing: a dry, almost comic deadpan that makes the line land without self-pity. "It doesn't bother me" is doing heavy work. It's not indifference; it's emotional discipline, a refusal to let the possibility of defeat dictate whether the fight is worth showing up for.
Context matters because Lewis belonged to a generation shaped by labor battles, anti-fascism, McCarthyism, civil rights - eras where "winning" was rarely clean and often arrived decades later, if at all. The quote isn't romantic. It's pragmatic: history moves slow, and serious people keep pushing anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lewis, Al. (2026, January 16). I've been in the struggle over seventy years - it doesn't bother me I may not win. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ive-been-in-the-struggle-over-seventy-years-it-138806/
Chicago Style
Lewis, Al. "I've been in the struggle over seventy years - it doesn't bother me I may not win." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ive-been-in-the-struggle-over-seventy-years-it-138806/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I've been in the struggle over seventy years - it doesn't bother me I may not win." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ive-been-in-the-struggle-over-seventy-years-it-138806/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.





