pick up your marbles and go home

To abandon or withdraw from a project, situation, or activity in a petulant manner because one does not like way in which it is progressing. It seems that the governor is ready to pick up his marbles and go home if the state senate isn't willing to increase the funds for the redevelopment scheme. The danger of relying on a private organization to fund a political campaign is that they may pick up their marbles and go home if the candidate doesn't do everything that's in the company's interest.

If you pick up your marbles and go home, you leave a situation or activity in which you are involved because you are angry about what is happening. They called it the dirtiest Olympics ever and briefly threatened to pick up their marbles and go home. Note: You usually use this expression to suggest that someone is wrong to do this. Note: The reference here is to a player in a game of marbles who is annoyed about losing and therefore stops playing and takes the marbles away so that nobody else can play either.