Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

The line contrasts the irreversibility of the past with the moral and practical agency available in the future. “Yesterday” stands for regret, mistakes, and sunk costs—things that cannot be reclaimed or revised. “Tomorrow,” by contrast, is framed as a contest whose outcome depends on present choices: it can be “won” through resolve, planning, and action, or “lost” through inaction and poor judgment. Attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson, the sentiment fits the rhetoric of political leadership—urging audiences to stop relitigating past failures and instead commit to forward-looking effort and responsibility.