The line is widely cited in Mao-era and post-Mao prose as a proverb-style summation of the hardship of founding any great enterprise. It echoes the sentiment of Mao Zedong's
毛泽东 《
七律·
吊罗荣桓同志》 (1963) and classical military lines like
百战多 in Tang regulated verse, but functions today as a free-standing maxim rather than a tagged quotation. Often used in memoirs of Communist Party history, business founder interviews, and retrospective editorials.
