the.com/lost cause
A fight you keep fighting mainly so you can say you never quit.
means A goal or effort that has no realistic chance of succeeding, pursued anyway.
from A straightforward pairing of 'lost' (already failed, beyond recovery) and 'cause' (a goal or side worth fighting for), in use since at least the 1700s. The phrase took on heavier political weight in the US after the Civil War, when 'the Lost Cause' became the name for a romanticized, whitewashed memory of the Confederacy — a reminder that even ordinary words can get recruited into extraordinary myth-making.
- origin
- popularized post-Civil War as romanticized Confederate myth
- psychology
- sunk cost fallacy wearing a noble disguise
- test
- if hope requires ignoring all evidence, that's your answer