War & Peace Quote by David Sarnoff

Sarnoff’s line is a stealth manifesto for a 20th-century builder who understood that “winning” is often just the press release. “Believe me” isn’t decoration; it’s the cadence of a man selling conviction the way he sold radio and television to a skeptical public. He’s asking you to trust the temperament behind the empire: not the patient inventor in a lab, but the combatant executive who treated markets, regulators, and rivals like terrain to be taken.

The key move is the demotion of victory. By insisting the thrill is “as much” in the battle, Sarnoff reframes struggle as a feature, not a tax. That’s self-justification and recruitment pitch in one sentence. If the fight is intrinsically rewarding, then the long hours, the bruising negotiations, the ethical gray zones of corporate warfare start to look less like compromises and more like character. It also functions as inoculation against disappointment: if you tie meaning to the contest itself, you can keep feeling “thrill” even when outcomes are delayed, partial, or contested.

Context matters because Sarnoff’s career was shaped by high-stakes conflict: the commercialization of broadcasting, patent wars, the scramble to define national media infrastructure, and the constant pressure to out-innovate and outmaneuver competitors. In that world, victory is rarely final; it’s provisional, followed by the next lawsuit, the next standard, the next disruptive device. The subtext is almost Darwinian: the modern technologist isn’t happiest at the finish line, but in the chase that makes the finish line possible.