Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.

Denis Waitley (b. 1933) is an American motivational speaker and self-help author whose work in the 1970s–1990s popularized “winner/loser” contrasts as a way to frame habits of thought and behavior. This quotation reflects themes common in his talks and books on personal achievement: using past experience as feedback rather than as a place to dwell, and focusing attention on present effort directed toward future goals. While widely circulated in quotation collections and motivational media under Waitley’s name, the line is often presented without a clear date or a reliably citable first publication context.

The saying draws a sharp psychological distinction between rumination and learning. “Losers” are characterized as trapped by regret, nostalgia, or grievance—treating the past as a fixed identity. “Winners,” by contrast, treat the past instrumentally: they extract lessons, then return attention to present action (“enjoy working in the present”) aimed at shaping what comes next. The emphasis on enjoyment suggests that success is not only outcome-based but process-based—sustained progress comes from finding meaning in current effort rather than living in either hindsight or fantasy. It encapsulates a pragmatic, forward-directed ethic typical of late-20th-century self-improvement literature.