survive

no plan survives contact with the enemy

Military plans always need to be changed once they are enacted in real-life military situations. The saying emphasizes the need for flexibility, as opposed to strict adherence to strategy. It is attributed to Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, a 19th-century Prussian field marshal. Men, be ready to make changes on the battlefield—we all know that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
See also: contact, enemy, no, plan, survive

survive the test of time

1. To work, function, or endure for a very long time. (A less common variant of "stand/withstand the test of time.") As computer technology improves, it's ironically getting harder and harder to find a piece of equipment that can survive the test of time.
2. To be particularly popular or well regarded for a long period of time. Of all the other cast members, hers was the only career that survived the test of time.
See also: of, survive, test, time
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • no plan survives contact with the enemy
  • nuclear
  • go nuclear
  • nuclear option
  • doolally
  • Lally
  • don't ask, don't tell
  • Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Harass, Don't Pursue
  • harass
  • boot camp
References in periodicals archive
Where a true common disaster clause is used, the beneficiary-spouse will not receive the proceeds if she dies of injuries sustained in the same accident (or other disaster) that causes the death of the insured-regardless of how long she actually survives the insured.
Sinclair said this implies that the main adaptations required to survive freezing are at the cellular or biochemical level, rather than because of fundamental structural differences.
In this way, the Australian water-holding frog (Cyclorana platycephala) can survive up to seven years without rain.
Now Crozier is going and deputy chairman Frank Pattison (no, I don't know who he is either) has gone, but Davies is still there, like Gloria Gaynor singing 'I Will Survive'.
Those who stayed and were lucky enough to survive the civil war eventually fell victim to the drought that began three years ago, resulting in another barrage of displaced people heading for the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"The steel industry has to be revamped and re-engineered to survive," says Mitre, a native of Campana, Argentina.
Drive and Survive is one of the practical sessions being held at the centre.
Haitians survive, according to Aristide, because "we work together to bring in a crop or build a neighbor's house in exchange for a meal shared at the end of the day."
To survive, the publication would-need an endowment or at least $50,000 in additional income above what is already expected to continue print publishing.
The industry will not survive until October 2000 for the "perfect fix" on the timetable offered by HCFA.
In the years that followed, his family often came close to starvation but managed to survive. Others weren't so lucky.
The remainder of this article focuses on the extent to which NOLs survive a corporate acquisition in States that lack express statutory authorization for their transfer from one corporation to another.
One small Polish farmer, whose opinion recently appeared in a Warsaw newspaper, summed it up the best: "The Polish peasant was able to survive through numerous hardships, thanks to his faith and the love of the land cultivated by his ancestors.
By this route, then, I fell upon the option of writing with as much strength as I could muster in a weak genre - a contingent discourse, if you will - by narrating my experience of objects that were likely to survive being written about, and that, by surviving, might redeem or repudiate what I had written by replenishing all those challenges to knowledge and self-knowledge that are shorn away in the historical act of composition.