Quotes and Sayings about Failure
"Humanitarian missions are little different from any other public enterprise, diplomacy included, which is susceptible of misinterpretation by the public, hence ultimately of failure."
- Alvin Adams
(Related: Failure, Diplomacy, Public)
"When I was about 15... I made my first attempt as a leading lady, and was, of course, a complete failure."
- Maude Adams
(Related: Failure, First, Lady, Leading)
"Life is so fresh, life is every day so new if we are fighting, only for the best. Sometimes I think the only real satisfaction in life is failure, failure in your endeavor to do your best."
- Maude Adams
(Related: Life, Failure, Day, Fighting, Satisfaction)
"Don't be afraid of failure; be afraid of petty success."
- Maude Adams
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive."
- Scott Adams
(Related: Success, Successful, Failure, Goal)
"The only risk of failure is promotion."
- Scott Adams
(Related: Failure, Promotion, Risk)
"No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma - but we make out of them just what suits our purposes."
- Alfred Adler
(Related: Experience, Success, Failure, Cause)
"We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes."
- Amos Bronson Alcott
(Related: Heaven)
"I knew that there were several, among African-American leaders, who had been put out by me because of my failure or reluctance to endorse Sen. Kerry."
- Rodney Alexander
(Related: Failure, African, Leaders)
"Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure."
- Fred Allen
(Related: Failure, Church, First)
"I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history, and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed."
- George Allen
(Related: History, Action, Failure, Apology, Senate, states, Today, United, Victims)
"To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment."
- James Allen
(Related: Failure, Purpose)
"They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure."
- James Allen
(Related: Fear, Failure, Doubt)
"He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure."
- James Lane Allen
(Related: Fear, Failure, Doubt)
"To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment."
- James Lane Allen
(Related: Failure, Purpose)
"Our system provides for a winner to take office on January 20th, and he is expected to take command of the ship of state. Failure to do so, characterized by hesitation and indecision, will harm the national interest."
- Richard V. Allen
(Related: Failure, Harm, Hesitation, Indecision, Interest, Office, State, Will)
"The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?"
- Aldrich Ames
(Related: Failure, Victory, Help, Information, Play)
"I think many experiences are bound to be failures, and sometimes I regret them before they even happen."
- Keren Ann
(Related: Regret)
"Failure is impossible."
- Susan B. Anthony
(Related: Failure)
"Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength."
- Karen Armstrong
(Related: Success, Failure, Strength, Islam)
"Failure is the most terrible thing in our business. When we fail, the whole world knows about it."
- Desi Arnaz
(Related: Business, Failure, World)
"For every failure, there's an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour."
- Mary Kay Ash
(Related: Action, Failure)
"The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society."
- Paddy Ashdown
(Related: Society, Failure)
"A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."
- Margaret Atwood
(Related: Reason, Writing)
"I'd rather have huge success and huge failures than travel in the middle of the road."
- Kevyn Aucoin
(Related: Success, Travel, Road)
"To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it."
- Irving Babbitt
(Related: Failure, Nations)
"American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society."
- Thomas Babington
(Related: Society, Failure, American, Authority, Democracy)
"Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final."
- Roger Babson
(Related: Success, Failure, Mind)
"It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final."
- Roger Babson
(Related: Success, Failure, Mind)
"The main reason for the failure of the modern medical science is that it is dealing with results and not causes. Nothing more than the patching up of those attacked and the burying of those who are slain, without a thought being given to the real strong hold."
- Edward Bach
(Related: Medical, Science, Thought, Failure, Being, Causes, Nothing, Reason, Results)
"I saw why people died and how they died. I saw gunshot wounds and liver failure. It was a good learning experience, so I came regularly on weekends and holidays."
- Michael Baden
(Related: Experience, People, Failure, Holidays, Learning, Wounds)
"I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success, but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who, it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring."
- Tom Baker
(Related: Time, Success, Failure, Disappointment, Rest)
"The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide."
- James A. Baldwin
(Related: Failure, End, Living)
"Feeling is the consciousness of the resulting conditions - of success, failure, equilibrium, compromise or balance, in this continuous rivalry of ideas."
- James M. Baldwin
(Related: Success, Ideas, Failure, Balance, Compromise, Consciousness, Feeling, Rivalry)
"I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally."
- Lucille Ball
(Related: Life, Failure, Divorce, Eyes, Hate)
"The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only unreality."
- Toni Cade Bambara
(Related: Dream, Failure, Friends)
"Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought."
- Joseph Barbera
(Related: Thought, Impression, Failure, Despair, Disappointment)
"We are all failures at least, all the best of us are."
- J. M. Barrie
"We are all of us failures, at least, the best of us are."
- James M. Barrie
"There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it."
- Chuck Barris
(Related: People, Failure, Television)
"Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping."
- Ethel Barrymore
(Related: Difficulties, Forget, Past)
"Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures."
- Bernard Baruch
(Related: Blame, Mistakes)
"Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought."
- Bernard Baruch
(Related: Life, Thought, Action, Errors, Public)
"For four years, I listened to stories of intelligence failures, and it wasn't due to incompetence of anyone in the system, but that the system is so arcane."
- Charles F. Bass
(Related: Intelligence, Incompetence, Years)
"I wasn't afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure."
- Anne Baxter
(Related: Failure)
"It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes."
- Anne Baxter
(Related: Life, Failure)
"Twenty million more have Chronic Kidney Disease, where patients experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function, the end result of which is kidney failure."
- Xavier Becerra
(Related: Experience, Failure, Disease, End, Result)
"African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure, giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans."
- Xavier Becerra
(Related: Failure, African, Americans, Giving, Population)
"Without failure there is no sweetness in success. There's no understanding of it."
- Glenn Beck
(Related: Success, Failure, Sweetness, Understanding)
"I know acts and I'm not going to name names but these people sold ten million copies the first time and the second album sells three million and it's considered a failure and they're dropped and that's really a shame."
- Gerry Beckley
(Related: Time, People, Failure, First, Name, Names, Shame)
"There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success."
- Max Beerbohm
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Hollywood... a city I was to come back to time and again, in sickness and in health, in success and in failure, with anticipation and with dread."
- Dirk Benedict
(Related: Success, Time, Health, Failure, Anticipation, Hollywood, Sickness)
"All war represents a failure of diplomacy."
- Tony Benn
(Related: War, Failure, Diplomacy)
"In general, the Internet was not designed to accommodate deliberate failures to communicate."
- Daniel J. Bernstein
(Related: Internet)
"The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them."
- Bruno Bettelheim
(Related: Fear, Failure, Advice, Books, Children, Desire, Right, Wonder)
"Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Failure, Authority, Crime, Fool)
"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Failure, Being, Enemies, First, Man)
"Discipline is based on pride, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of the goal or the fear of failure."
- Gary Ryan Blair
(Related: Fear, Discipline, Failure, Goal, Habit, Attention, Confidence, Excitement, Pride, Respect)
"Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity."
- Gary Ryan Blair
(Related: Opportunity, Failure, Caution, Inaction)
"Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity."
- Gary Ryan Blair
(Related: Success, Opportunity, Failure, Goal, Caution, Inaction, Risk)
"A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection."
- Arthur Bloch
(Related: Failure, Will)
"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is."
- Allan Bloom
(Related: Belief, Failure, Vision, Books, Now)
"Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions."
- Orlando Bloom
(Related: Success, Failure, Disaster)
"There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco... a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions."
- Orlando Bloom
(Related: Failure, Difference, Disaster)
"Over the next four years, we will be bold. We will be willing to experiment. We will not fear failure."
- Matt Blunt
(Related: Fear, Failure, Will, Years)
"But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes."
- Bodhidharma
(Related: Success, Failure, Mind)
"But our energy woes are in many ways the result of classic market failures that can only be addressed through collective action, and government is the vehicle for collective action in a democracy."
- Sherwood Boehlert
(Related: Government, Action, Democracy, Energy, Result)
"Never permit failure to become a habit."
- William Frederick Book
(Related: Failure, Habit)
"Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have."
- Louis E. Boone
(Related: Life, Fear, Failure)
"The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms."
- Neal Boortz
(Related: Life, Success, Failure, Choices, Fact, Key, Leading, Responsibility)
"A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Determination, Failure, Succeed)
"All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right about face which turns us from failure to success."
- Dorthea Brande
(Related: Success, Failure, Act, Formula, Frustration, Right)
"Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line."
- Richard Branson
(Related: Business, Success, Failure, Financial, Wrong)
"The failure in Ohio to have adequate voting capacity for the people who were registered and eligible to vote was an absolute denial of their right to vote."
- Carol Moseley Braun
(Related: People, Failure, Denial, Right, Vote, Voting)
"There's only one thing that can guarantee our failure, and that's if we quit."
- Craig Breedlove
(Related: Failure)
"Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases."
- David Brin
(Related: Science, Islam, Fiction, Right)
"We decided to try in vitro, because both Peter and I felt we couldn't handle another failure. When I miscarried after that, we had to come to terms with the possibility that this wasn't meant to be."
- Christie Brinkley
(Related: Failure, Possibility)
"The more control you have over your life, the more responsible you feel for your own success - or failure."
- Arthur C. Brooks
(Related: Success, Life, Control, Failure)
"The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top."
- Joyce Brothers
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Jobs for every American is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter, basic food, and medical care. I'm talking about welfare for all. Without it, you're going to have warfare for all."
- Jerry Brown
(Related: Medical, Food, Failure, American, Care, Dignity, Income, Jobs, Production, Talking, Welfare)
"I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how to solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government."
- Scott Brown
(Related: Government, Failure, America, Blame, Creation, Job, Manufacturing, Pen, President, Problems, Question)
"If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure."
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
(Related: Time, Failure, Worry)
"A minute's success pays the failure of years."
- Robert Browning
(Related: Success, Failure, Years)
"One of the biggest problems with the modern feminist movement is its failure to bring men along with us."
- Tammy Bruce
(Related: Men, Failure, Problems)
"Definitely, it's a fear of failure that drives me."
- Jerry Bruckheimer
(Related: Fear, Failure)
"There are millions of ways for people to die, if you number each vital organ, each ways it can fail, all the poisons from the earth and the sea which can cause these failures."
- Steven Brust
(Related: People, Cause, Earth, Sea)
"In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option."
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
(Related: Failure, Iraq, Succeed)
"We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States."
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
(Related: History, Intelligence, Failure, Months, states, United)
"The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows."
- Buddha
(Related: Life, Failure)
"We don't grow unless we take risks. Any successful company is riddled with failures."
- James E. Burke
(Related: Successful, Company)
"I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate."
- George Burns
(Related: Love, Success, Failure, Hate)
"I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate."
- George Burns
(Related: Love, Success, Failure, Hate)
"A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying."
- John Burroughs
(Related: Failure, Blame, Man, Trying)
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else."
- John Burroughs
(Related: Failure, Blame, Man)
"I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Success, Failure, Hope, Ambition, Succeed, Washington)
"The carrying out of the Potsdam Agreement has, however, been obstructed by the failure of the Allied Control Council to take the necessary steps to enable the German economy to function as an economic unit."
- James F. Byrnes
(Related: Control, Failure, Agreement, Economy)
"At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Man)
"The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure."
- Elias Canetti
(Related: Failure, Difference, World)
"Indecision and delays are the parents of failure."
- George Canning
(Related: Failure, Indecision, Parents)
"At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives."
- Robert Farrar Capon
(Related: Failure, Lies, Woman)
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
- Truman Capote
(Related: Success, Failure)
"So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities."
- Stokely Carmichael
(Related: Power, Cities, Civil rights, Committee)
"Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success."
- Dale Carnegie
(Related: Success, Failure, Discouragement)
"It's not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail."
- Jimmy Carter
(Related: Fear, Failure)
"If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk."
- Rosalynn Carter
(Related: Failure, Goals, Possibility, Risk)
"You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk."
- Rosalynn Carter
(Related: Failure, Goals, Possibility, Risk)
"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."
- George Washington Carver
(Related: People, Habit, Excuses)
"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space."
- Johnny Cash
(Related: Time, Failure, Energy, Forget, Mistakes, Past, Space)
"They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?"
- Fidel Castro
(Related: Success, Failure, America, Capitalism, Socialism, Talk)
"Once you start a working on something, don't be afraid of failure and don't abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest."
- Chanakya
(Related: Work, People, Failure)
"Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."
- Coco Chanel
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
- Charlie Chaplin
(Related: Courage, Failure, Fool)
"One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake."
- Anton Chekhov
(Related: God, Mistake)
"Well, I think first of all there was a failure to have real, clear information at our disposal. There was a real lack of situational awareness. We didn't have the capabilities on the ground to give us real-time, accurate assessments of the physical condition of the city."
- Michael Chertoff
(Related: Failure, Awareness, First, Information)
"The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn."
- Agatha Christie
(Related: People)
"Their lives have been largely defined by failure and you would think the prospect of marriage, which is supposed to be bountiful and hopeful, it's just really another kind of tangential thing in his life."
- Thomas Haden Church
(Related: Life, Marriage, Failure)
"But all actors go through the process, it's hit and miss, you have achievement and failure."
- Thomas Haden Church
(Related: Achievement, Failure, Actors)
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Failure, Virtue, Envy, Ignorance, Misery, Philosophy, Sharing, Socialism)
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Success, Enthusiasm, Failure, Loss)
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Success, Courage, Failure)
"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Success, Failure, Loss)
"This attempt to isolate cell constituents might have been a failure if they had been destroyed by the relative brutality of the technique employed. But this did not happen."
- Albert Claude
(Related: Failure)
"When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that."
- William Kingdon Clifford
(Related: Action, Failure, Evil, Right, Wrong)
"Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy."
- Montgomery Clift
(Related: Failure, Artist, Energy, Misery)
"The only failure is not to try."
- George Clooney
(Related: Failure)
"When runaway inflation and bank failures struck in Germany in the 1920s, the middle class was destroyed, which led directly to the rise of the Nazis."
- Nick Clooney
(Related: Class, Germany, Inflation, Middle class)
"Pharmaceutical companies are enjoying unprecedented profits and access with this Administration. Yet the Republicans' prescription drug plan for seniors has been a colossal failure, and over 43 million Americans wake up every morning without health insurance."
- Jim Clyburn
(Related: Health, Failure, Americans, Republicans)
"Don't come home a failure."
- Ty Cobb
(Related: Home, Failure)
"Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise, and trading on your integrity and not having dignity in life. That's really where failure comes."
- Tom Cochrane
(Related: Life, Failure, Betrayal, Compromise, Dignity, Integrity, Tragedy)
"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Politics, Fear, Failure)
"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure."
- Confucius
(Related: Success, Failure, Preparation)
"Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible."
- Jimmy Connors
(Related: Failure, Challenge)
"Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God."
- Charles Horton Cooley
(Related: God, Failure, Humanity, Spirit)
"I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Truth, Failure, Books)
"If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements."
- Mason Cooley
"After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Success)
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
- Calvin Coolidge
(Related: Education, Talent, Genius, People, Determination, Nothing, Persistence, Will, World)
"If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success, to discourage me I cannot see any way in which I would ever have made progress."
- Calvin Coolidge
(Related: Time, Success, Progress)
"I think he Oswald felt he was a failure and for the United States and for President Kennedy and all of us. He knew he was a failure at everything he tried, frustrated, with a very sad life, but he was a Marxist."
- John Sherman Cooper
(Related: Life, Failure, President, states, United)
"It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels."
- Jon Corzine
(Related: Power, Failure, Congress, Inflation, Now, Wage, Years)
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
- Bill Cosby
(Related: Success, Fear, Failure, Desire, Order, Succeed)
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
- Bill Cosby
(Related: Success, Failure, Key, Trying)
"Failure doesn't kill you... it increases your desire to make something happen."
- Kevin Costner
(Related: Failure, Desire)
"If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Failure, Building)
"Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Music, Failure)
"Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Failure, Being, State)
"Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Opportunity, Failure, Disguise)
"Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Power, Failure)
"The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Education, People, Failure, Destiny)
"I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage."
- Noel Coward
(Related: Astrology, Blame, Stars)
"The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections."
- Hart Crane
(Related: Failure, Fact, Folk)
"Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success, and in some ways it's better to have failure at the beginning of your career, or your life."
- Michael Crawford
(Related: Life, Success, Failure, Beginning, Career)
"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style."
- Quentin Crisp
(Related: Failure, First, May, Style, Succeed)
"Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others."
- Davy Crockett
(Related: People, Failure, Fault, Heaven)
"You can't have any successes unless you can accept failure."
- George Cukor
(Related: Failure)
"You cannot learn anything from success, you only learn from failure."
- Jim Dale
(Related: Success, Failure)
"I don't think there's any way it could have failed. We don't know failure in this band. We didn't know failure. We got to know it a little after awhile but at that time there was no such word."
- Roger Daltrey
(Related: Time, Failure, Word)
"The only real failure in life is one not learned from."
- Anthony J. D'Angelo
(Related: Life, Failure)
"The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs; it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking, large ambition, and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity."
- Mitch Daniels
(Related: Policy, Failure, Optimism, Ambition, American, Future, Jobs, Now, Prosperity, Risk, Risk-taking, Spirit)
"It really is impossible not to like him. His success was his failure."
- Arthur C. Danto
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Spend enough time around success and failure, and you learn a reverence for possibility."
- Dale Dauten
(Related: Success, Time, Failure, Possibility)
"It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system."
- Gavyn Davies
(Related: Failure, Future, Question, World)
"The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same."
- Colin R. Davis
(Related: Success, Failure, Road)
"The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures."
- Humphry Davy
"So I try not to have any actual expectations for myself for any level of success or failure."
- Gavin DeGraw
(Related: Success, Failure, Expectations)
"Failure is not a crime. The crime is not trying."
- Ron Dellums
(Related: Failure, Crime, Trying)
"Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes."
- John Dewey
(Related: Failure)
"If you're the type of person who has to fulfill your dreams, you've gotta be resourceful to make sure you can do it. I came out to California when I was 21, thinking my New York credentials would take me all the way. I came back home a year later all dejected and a failure."
- Vin Diesel
(Related: Home, Dreams, Failure, Thinking)
"Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure."
- Edsger Dijkstra
(Related: Success, Failure, Elegance, Luxury)
"War is failure of diplomacy."
- John Dingell
(Related: War, Failure, Diplomacy)
"Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Success, People, Failure, Perseverance)
"Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal."
- Mike Ditka
(Related: Success, Failure)
"I met Ashley two weeks before I married him. It was a joke-the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. Once I was married, I didn't want to be a failure, so I stuck it out for six months, which was about six months too long."
- Shannen Doherty
(Related: Failure, Months, Want)
"I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure."
- Sam Donaldson
(Related: Work, Success, People, Failure, Years)
"Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success."
- Edward Dowden
(Related: Success, Failure, World)
"Nothing fails like failure."
- Margaret Drabble
(Related: Failure, Nothing)
"Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure."
- Margaret Drabble
(Related: Success, Failure, Nothing)
"So it is in poetry. All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse."
- John Drinkwater
(Related: Poetry, Failure, Prose, Will)
"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it."
- Alexandre Dumas
(Related: Failure, Being, Enemies, First, Man)
"Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success."
- James Dyson
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others."
- Amelia Earhart
(Related: Men, Women, Failure, Challenge, Want)
"Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others."
- Amelia Earhart
(Related: Men, Women, Failure, Challenge)
"Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others."
- Amelia Earhart
(Related: Men, Women, Failure, Challenge)
"Translation is the art of failure."
- Umberto Eco
(Related: Art, Failure)
"Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."
- Thomas A. Edison
(Related: Progress, Failure, Discontent, First, Man, Necessity, Will)
"Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."
- Thomas A. Edison
(Related: Failure, Man, Will)
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
- Thomas A. Edison
(Related: Success, People, Life)
"To me, all war is failure for humanity, though it often is a bounty for commerce."
- Mark Edwards
(Related: War, Failure, Commerce, Humanity)
"Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure."
- Edward Eggleston
(Related: Success, People, Failure, End)
"America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to."
- Larry Elder
(Related: Government, Failure, Possibility, America, Capitalism, Consequences, Nothing, Practice, Theory)
"The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best."
- George Eliot
(Related: Fear, Failure, Purpose)
"There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows."
- George Eliot
(Related: Life, Failure)
"Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure."
- George Eliot
(Related: Failure, Perseverance)
"I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best."
- George Eliot
(Related: Fear, Failure, Purpose, Man, Proof, Word)
"It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success."
- Havelock Ellis
(Related: Success)
"What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked 'a majority of the majority,' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?"
- Rahm Emanuel
(Related: Politics, Failure, America, Legislation, Majority, Mind, Security)
"Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills."
- William Empson
(Related: Failure, Blood, Effort, Poison, Waste)
"Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom."
- Erik Erikson
(Related: Love, Mistake, Failure, Accomplishment, Children, Joy, Want)
"In our tabulation of psychoanalytic results, we have classed those who stopped treatment together with those not improved. This appears to be reasonable; a patient who fails to finish his treatment, and is not improved, is surely a therapeutic failure."
- Hans Eysenck
(Related: Failure, Results, Treatment)
"War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation."
- Oriana Fallaci
(Related: War, Failure, Poor)
"It has always felt like a failure that Bjorn and I couldn't keep our family together. You never get it back, but to this day I don't regret splitting up. The reason behind our separation is one of those things I definitely don't want to go into!"
- Agnetha Faltskog
(Related: Family, Failure, Day, Reason, Regret, Separation, Want)
"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."
- Jerry Falwell
(Related: Failure, Christian, Being)
"There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows."
- Frederic William Farrar
(Related: Life, Failure)
"If you try to do your best there is no failure."
- Mike Farrell
(Related: Failure)
"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."
- William Faulkner
(Related: Dreams, Failure, Perfection)
"The assertion of failure coming from such persons does not mean that Mr. Mill failed to promote the practical success of those objects the advocacy of which forms the chief feature of his political writings."
- Millicent Fawcett
(Related: Success, Failure)
"No man is a failure who is enjoying life."
- William Feather
(Related: Life, Failure, Man)
"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is."
- Bob Feller
(Related: Life, Success, Opportunity, Baseball, Day, Yesterday)
"Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply."
- Brian Ferneyhough
(Related: Nature, Success, Failure, Questioning, Sense)
"There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation."
- Brian Ferneyhough
(Related: Art, Work, Failure)
"It's not a very high failure rate if you choose people that you really like the sound of."
- Bryan Ferry
(Related: People, Failure, Sound)
"In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things."
- Harvey Fierstein
(Related: Character, Failure, Colors, Song)
"It is commonly said that a teacher fails if he has not been surpassed by his students. There has been no failure on our part in this regard considering how far they have gone."
- Edmond H. Fischer
(Related: Failure, Students)
"Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure."
- Errol Flynn
(Related: Failure, Man)
"The man who has done his level best... is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure."
- B. C. Forbes
(Related: Success, Failure, Man, May, World)
"The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure."
- B. C. Forbes
(Related: Failure, Conscience, Man)
"Failure is success if we learn from it."
- Malcolm Forbes
(Related: Success, Failure)
"The rise of China as a new power is another great challenge for the US. Our failure to properly handle Germany and Japan earlier in the 20th century cost us and the world dearly. We must not make this same mistake with China."
- Steve Forbes
(Related: Power, Mistake, Failure, Challenge, Germany, World)
"Our failure to properly deal with Germany and Japan early cost the world dearly later on. We dare not make the same mistake with China."
- Steve Forbes
(Related: Mistake, Failure, Germany, World)
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."
- Henry Ford
(Related: Time, Opportunity, Failure)
"Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Fear, Failure, Mistakes, Will)
"Educational institutes can no longer be prizes in church politics or furnish berths for failure in other walks of life."
- E. Franklin Frazier
(Related: Life, Politics, Failure, Church, Prizes)
"There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake."
- Robert Fripp
(Related: Mistake, Failure, Mistakes)
"The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures."
- J. William Fulbright
(Related: Excuses)
"The mere thought of divorce terrified me. To me, divorce symbolized failure."
- Annette Funicello
(Related: Thought, Failure, Divorce)
"War remains the decisive human failure."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: War, Failure)
"One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure."
- John W. Gardner
(Related: People, Failure, Learning, Risk)
"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."
- Bill Gates
(Related: Success, Failure)
"We judged that a sudden, disorderly failure of Bear would have brought with it unpredictable but severe consequences for the functioning of the broader financial system and the broader economy, with lower equity prices, further downward pressure on home values, and less access to credit for companies and households."
- Timothy Geithner
(Related: Home, Failure, Financial, Values, Consequences, Credit, Economy, Pressure)
"I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success."
- J. Paul Getty
(Related: Success, Failure, Hate, Regret)
"A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature."
- Paul Getty
(Related: Nature, Failure, Hatred)
"The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council."
- Boutros Boutros Ghali
(Related: Failure, Nations, Security, United)
"All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure."
- Alberto Giacometti
(Related: Success, Failure, Will)
"Failures are expected by losers, ignored by winners."
- Joe Gibbs
"Our managers hadn't had that kind of success - the record company hadn't, we hadn't - and the feeling was that the next record had to be even bigger, and if it wasn't it would be some kind of failure."
- Roland Gift
(Related: Success, Failure, Company, Feeling, Managers)
"My only failure was the restaurant in Myrtle Beach. I kept it open for four years. It was in a tourist town, it was only busy four and half, five months of the year. But the bills kept coming all year."
- Mickey Gilley
(Related: Failure, Beach, Months, Open, Years)
"In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection."
- Carol Gilligan
(Related: Women, Truth, Failure, Aggression, Care, Connection, Lies, Responsibility, Voice)
"I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try."
- Nikki Giovanni
(Related: Life, Failure, Mind)
"Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction."
- Charles J. Givens
(Related: Action, Inaction, Past, Reason)
"Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures."
- Andy Goldsworthy
(Related: Building, Day, Night, Project)
"If you don't fix latent failures in your system, you're asking for trouble."
- John Gould
(Related: Trouble)
"The only reason my work seems to be eclectic up to a certain period is because I was a failure as an actor."
- Hugh Grant
(Related: Work, Failure, Actor, Reason)
"My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent."
- Ulysses S. Grant
(Related: Errors, Judgment)
"Failure too is a form of death."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Death, Failure)
"Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Directly after the show people might have responded better to it, but who really knows. It did what it did and while it seems like a failure to most but it was a success for me and has given me so many opportunities."
- Justin Guarini
(Related: Success, People, Failure)
"Attempt something so impossible that unless God is in it, it's doomed to failure."
- John Haggai
(Related: God, Failure)
"You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism."
- Alexander Haig
(Related: History, Failure, Frustration)
"We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve."
- John B. S. Haldane
(Related: Success, Failure, Environment, Heredity)
"Laziness is a secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it's only kept a secret from the person who fails."
- Robert Half
(Related: Failure, Laziness)
"Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success."
- Thomas Chandler Haliburton
(Related: Success)
"Foreign aid is neither a failure nor a panacea. It is, instead, an important tool of American policy that can serve the interests of the United States and the world if wisely administered."
- Lee H. Hamilton
(Related: Policy, Failure, American, states, United, World)
"Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it."
- Mia Hamm
(Related: Time, Failure, Day, Practice)
"The pressures are intense, because the rewards for success and the penalty for failure are more and more."
- Alan Hansen
(Related: Success, Failure)
"The failure of Socialism since 1945 is that whilst encouraging us all, the creators of wealth, to produce less through strikes, it has caused us all to demand a higher level of our own product."
- Brian Harris
(Related: Encouraging, Failure, Wealth, Socialism)
"Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships."
- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
(Related: Intelligence, Imagination, Love, Danger, Kindness, Relationships, Will)
"I think you can learn as much from success as you can from failure."
- Corey Hart
(Related: Success, Failure)
"As efforts to fix this failure at the Veterans Administration continue, I also intend to persist in demanding answers and action on the establishment of a new clinic to serve the veterans in North Central Washington."
- Doc Hastings
(Related: Action, Failure, Answers, Veterans, Washington)
"The most basic obligation we have to our veterans is that we keep the promises that were made to them. That is what makes the recent failures of the Veterans Administration so shameful."
- Doc Hastings
(Related: Obligation, Promises, Veterans)
"Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, I have failed three times, and what happens when he says, I am a failure."
- S. I. Hayakawa
(Related: Failure, Difference, Man)
"The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment."
- Chris Hedges
(Related: War, Failure, Cause, Open)
"Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Failure, Theater, Writing)
"Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?"
- Ernest Hemingway
(Related: Failure, Man, Old)
"Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education."
- John Hersey
(Related: Education, Failure, Beginning, First, Learning)
"It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense."
- John Hersey
(Related: Failure, Vision, Children, Defense, Profit, Weapons)
"Philanthropic colonization is a failure. National colonization will succeed."
- Theodor Herzl
(Related: Failure, Succeed, Will)
"Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God."
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
(Related: God, Failure, Being, Earth, Man, Sin)
"Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache, carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or greater Benefit."
- Napolean Hill
(Related: Failure, Adversity)
"Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities."
- Napolean Hill
(Related: Nature, Failure)
"Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Success, People, Failure)
"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Failure, Adversity)
"No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Success, Time, Failure, Man, Worth)
"Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Men, Success, Life, Defeat, Majority, Man)
"Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Success, Failure, Influence, Mind, Will, Words)
"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Men, Failure, Majority, Persistence)
"If we do not get No Child Left Behind right for Limited English Proficient students, the law will be a failure for most schools in the 15th Congressional District, and for many across the nation."
- Ruben Hinojosa
(Related: Failure, English, Law, Nation, Right, Schools, Students, Will)
"It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Failure, Expression)
"There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Failure, Loneliness)
"In Washington, success is just a training course for failure."
- Simon Hoggart
(Related: Success, Failure, Training, Washington)
"It is Basic Management 101 that if you reward failure you are going to get more failure, and if you want success you should reward success. But if you look at the way this administration has approached national security, they have kind of got that principle backwards."
- Chris Van Hollen
(Related: Success, Failure, Management, National security, Reward, Want)
"Having in my life been bitten by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death."
- Rupert Holmes
(Related: Death, Life, Success, Failure, Victory, Defeat)
"Success is 99 percent failure."
- Soichiro Honda
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure."
- Soichiro Honda
(Related: Success, Work, Failure, Results)
"Students rarely disappoint teachers who assure them in advance that they are doomed to failure."
- Sidney Hook
(Related: Failure, Students, Teachers)
"I never see failure as failure, but only as the game I must play and win."
- Tom Hopkins
(Related: Failure, Play)
"My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: Art, Failure, Direction, Disappointment, First, Right, Training, Writing, Years)
"But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer."
- Robert E. Howard
(Related: Failure, First, Living, Man, Profession, Writer)
"Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Heart, Failure, Optimism)
"There is no failure except in no longer trying."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Failure, Trying)
"The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Success, Failure)
"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Experience, Failure, Man)
"A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Success, Failure, Effort, May, Persistence)
"There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."
- Kin Hubbard
(Related: Failure, Purpose, Defeat, Trying, Weakness)
"His advice to me is basically to just love what you do and don't let the fear of failure stop you."
- Oliver Hudson
(Related: Love, Fear, Failure, Advice)
"We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success."
- Arianna Huffington
(Related: Success, Failure, Decisions, Right, Understanding)
"I think that failure by your own standards is certainly a form of success."
- Bonnie Hunt
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it."
- Morton Hunt
(Related: Love, People, Determination, Failure, Americans)
"Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure."
- William Hurt
(Related: Success, People, Failure)
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Life)
"A Failure in this Duty did once involve our Nation in all the Horrors of Rebellion and Civil War."
- Charles Inglis
(Related: War, Failure, Duty, Nation, Rebellion)
"Mr. Gonzales' failure to respond to questions legitimately posed to him by the Senate raises grave doubts in my mind as to his fitness to serve the people of the United States as their Attorney General."
- Daniel Inouye
(Related: Fitness, People, Failure, Grave, Mind, Questions, Senate, states, United)
"So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure."
- Jeremy Irons
(Related: Success, Failure, Desire, Risk, Saying)
"I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure."
- Jeremy Irons
(Related: Experience, Work, Failure, Want)
"The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape."
- Alice James
(Related: Success, Life, Lie, Failure, Luck, Posterity, Right)
"There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self."
- William James
(Related: Faith, Failure, Cause, Man, Self)
"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results."
- William James
(Related: Men, Success, Successful, Attitude, Failure, Positive, Act, Reality, Results, Will)
"Failure is a word unknown to me."
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah
(Related: Failure, Word)
"People in the business will stay with you through drugs and alcohol and divorces and insanity and everything else, but you have a failure, pal, and they don't want to know nothing about you!"
- Don Johnson
(Related: Business, People, Failure, Alcohol, Drugs, Insanity, Nothing, Want, Will)
"Even though some of the films I've made haven't been particularly commercial, I don't find them failures."
- Don Johnson
"Failure is a word that I simply don't accept."
- John H. Johnson
(Related: Failure, Word)
"The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
(Related: Failure, Bombs)
"What we have most to fear is failure of the heart."
- Sonia Johnson
(Related: Heart, Fear, Failure)
"I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."
- Michael Jordan
(Related: Failure, Trying)
"Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing."
- H. Stanley Judd
(Related: Failure, Challenge, Energy, Trying, Waste)
"My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world."
- Wynonna Judd
(Related: Music, Success, Failure, Purpose, Being, Famous, Living, Trying, World)
"The failures and successes are necessary for learning."
- Wynonna Judd
(Related: Learning)
"Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought."
- Herman Kahn
(Related: Thought, Decision, Mistakes, Paradox, Perspective, Result)
"My biggest failure is I have too many to talk about."
- Dean Kamen
(Related: Failure, Talk)
"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory."
- Herbert Kaufman
(Related: Success, Courage, Failure, Habit, Victory, Ambition, Persistence)
"There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object."
- John Keats
(Related: Failure, Hell)
"Success breeds success, and failure leads to a sort of fallow period."
- Felicity Kendal
(Related: Success, Failure)
"My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them."
- Jack Kerouac
(Related: Control, Failure, Fault)
"I think success has no rules, but you can learn a great deal from failure."
- Jean Kerr
(Related: Success, Failure, Rules)
"We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world."
- Charles Kettering
(Related: Failure, Cause, Disgrace, Man, World)
"An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots."
- Charles Kettering
(Related: Practice)
"One failure is worth seven and a half successes."
- Eli Khamarov
(Related: Failure, Worth)
"Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets."
- Victor Kiam
(Related: Money, Success, Idea, Failure, Entrepreneurs, Reputation, Responsibility, Risk, Support)
"Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it."
- Steve King
(Related: Government, History, Time, Democracy, Fathers, First, Founding, World)
"We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse."
- Rudyard Kipling
(Related: Failure)
"Fear comes in two packages fear of failure, and sometimes, fear of success."
- Tom Kite
(Related: Success, Fear, Failure)
"Success and failure are greatly overrated. But failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about."
- Hildegard Knef
(Related: Success, Failure, Talk)
"Something is wanting, and something must be done, or we shall be involved in all the horror of failure, and civil war without a prospect of its termination."
- Henry Knox
(Related: War, Failure, Horror)
"The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success."
- Michael Korda
(Related: Success, Time, People, Successful, Failure, Strength, Freedom, Measure, Succeed)
"This is true enough, but success is the next best thing to happiness, and if you can't be happy as a success, it's very unlikely that you would find a deeper, truer happiness in failure."
- Michael Korda
(Related: Happiness, Success, Failure)
"Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets."
- Michael Korda
(Related: Failure, Study)
"And I went to New York and died; for 10 years I walked those pavements. I can't think of New York without feeling uncomfortable and feeling like a failure."
- Harvey Korman
(Related: Failure, Feeling, Years)
"As I said there is nothing wrong with failing. Pick yourself up and try it again. You never are going to know how good you really are until you go out and face failure."
- Henry Kravis
(Related: Failure, Nothing, Wrong)
"In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure."
- Mike Krzyzewski
(Related: Thought, Failure, Positive, Coach, First, School, Sense)
"I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport."
- Mike Krzyzewski
(Related: Failure, Hope, Winning, Basketball, Kids, Teachers)
"I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process, and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be, but we're losing a little bit of that right now."
- Mike Krzyzewski
(Related: Failure, Losing, Now, Parents, Right)
"Failure is unfortunately as common as success."
- Sanjay Kumar
(Related: Success, Failure)
"What helped me most were my failures and slumps - when I couldn't get work, people weren't interested in me or had written me off."
- Frank Langella
(Related: Work, People)
"A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success!"
- Doug Larson
(Related: Friend)
"About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure."
- Tommy Lasorda
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure."
- Tommy Lasorda
(Related: Failure, Pressure, Thinking, Vocabulary, Word)
"Even as far back as when I started acting at 14, I know I've never considered failure."
- Jennifer Lawrence
(Related: Failure, Acting)
"You must not demand the failure of your peers, because the more good things that are around in film, in television, in theater - why the better it is for all of us."
- Jerome Lawrence
(Related: Failure, Film, Television, Theater)
"We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing."
- Robert E. Lee
(Related: God, Failure, Providence)
"By virtually any measure, the record of the Republican Majority is an appalling failure."
- Sheila Jackson Lee
(Related: Failure, Majority, Measure, Republican)
"Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure."
- Jack Lemmon
(Related: Fear, Failure)
"We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love."
- Madeleine L'Engle
(Related: Love, Illness, Result)
"There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell."
- Sean Lennon
(Related: Love, Failure, Betrayal, End)
"We are equally glad and surprised at Winston's return to office. It shows that he was built for success that he should have declined to withdraw and sulk over a superficial failure."
- Shane Leslie
(Related: Success, Failure, Office)
"A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him."
- Elmer G. Letterman
(Related: Failure, Man, May)
"The intelligence failures with respect to Iraq were massive and have damaged our credibility around the world."
- Carl Levin
(Related: Intelligence, Credibility, Iraq, Respect, World)
"I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that."
- Arthur Levitt
(Related: Selling, Enron, May, Nothing, Worth)
"Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement."
- C. S. Lewis
(Related: Achievement, Road)
"The failure of the Russian Socialist Republic will be the defeat of the proletariat of the whole world."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Failure, Defeat, Will, World)
"The success and the failure are not my concern, but His."
- Joseph Barber Lightfoot
(Related: Success, Failure, Concern)
"I will not be discouraged by failure; I will not be elated by success."
- Joseph Barber Lightfoot
(Related: Success, Failure, Will)
"We do not realise that we are children of eternity. If we did, then success would be no success, and failure would be no failure to us."
- Joseph Barber Lightfoot
(Related: Success, Failure, Children, Eternity)
"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
- Abraham Lincoln
(Related: Failure, Concern, Content)
"It takes 10 million failures to find the right stuff."
- George Lindsey
(Related: Right)
"Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures."
- Vince Lombardi
(Related: Family, Success, Pressure)
"However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Related: Success, Failure, Evil, May)
"The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Failure, Strength, Difference, First, World)
"Do not take yourself too seriously. You have to learn not to be dismayed at making mistakes. No human being can avoid failures."
- Lawrence G. Lovasik
(Related: Being, Mistakes)
"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
- James Russell Lowell
(Related: Failure, Crime)
"Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime."
- James Russell Lowell
(Related: Time, Failure, Crime)
"I simply don't believe in failure. In itself, it doesn't exist. We create it. We make ourselves fail."
- Alice Foote MacDougall
(Related: Failure)
"The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause."
- Gustav Mahler
(Related: Life, Failure, Applause, Opinion, World)
"In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure."
- Malcolm X
(Related: Success, Time, Failure, Deeds, Respect, Value)
"I think the greatest taboos in America are faith and failure."
- Michael Malone
(Related: Faith, Failure, America)
"Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act."
- Andre Malraux
(Related: Successful, Ideas, Courage, Failure, Act, Difference, Risk)
"Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act."
- Maxwell Maltz
(Related: Successful, Ideas, Courage, Failure, Act, Difference, Man, Risk)
"Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough."
- Og Mandino
(Related: Determination, Failure, Succeed, Will)
"Sound character provides the power with which a person may ride the emergencies of life instead of being overwhelmed by them. Failure is... the highway to success."
- Og Mandino
(Related: Life, Power, Success, Character, Failure, Being, May, Sound)
"When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves."
- Katherine Mansfield
(Related: Importance)
"No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes."
- Greil Marcus
(Related: Love, Money, Failure, America, Betrayal)
"There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King."
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Character, Courage, Failure, Man, Respect, Self, Self respect)
"You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them."
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Man, Measure)
"Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances."
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Success, Achievement, Failure, Circumstances, Effort)
"Working mothers are just as likely to want to conform to a standard of perfection and just as likely to suffer from their failure to meet it as their stay-at-home counterparts."
- Melinda M. Marshall
(Related: Failure, Mothers, Perfection, Want)
"One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king."
- Abraham Maslow
(Related: Failure, Man, Possibilities, Sense)
"I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge."
- Dave Matthews
(Related: Motivation, Fear, Failure, Economy, Oil, Revenge)
"Not failure, but low aim is sin."
- Benjamin E. Mays
(Related: Failure, Sin)
"I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else."
- Cormac McCarthy
(Related: Writing)
"Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance."
- John McCarthy
(Related: Love, Failure, Blame, Countries, First, Leaders, World)
"While it is important for people to see your promise you must also remember that hope is the keeper of both happiness and disappointment, the father of both progress and failure."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Happiness, Father, People, Progress, Failure, Hope, Disappointment, Promise)
"Do not let your ambitions become a sanctuary for your failures."
- Bryant H. McGill
"I was taught that to create anything you had to believe in failure, simply because you had to be prepared to go through an idea without any fear. Failure, you learned, as I did in art school, to be a wonderful thing. It allowed you to get up in the morning and take the pillow off your head."
- Malcolm Mclaren
(Related: Art, Idea, Fear, Failure, School)
"Mass transportation is doomed to failure in North America because a person's car is the only place where he can be alone and think."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Car, Failure, America)
"Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking."
- Jim McMahon
(Related: Failure, Risk)
"The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: God, Failure, Children, Devil, Man, Theory)
"Other countries, such as Israel, successfully employ behavior detection techniques at their airports, but the bloated, ineffective bureaucracy of TSA has produced another security failure for U.S. transportation systems."
- John Mica
(Related: Failure, Behavior, Bureaucracy, Countries, Israel, Security)
"If I have any justification for having lived it's simply, I'm nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There's some value in that."
- Arthur Miller
(Related: Faults, Justification, Nothing, Value)
"No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe."
- Henry Miller
(Related: War, Work, Failure, Earth, Leaders, Man, Talk, Universe, Will)
"There was a failure to recognize the deep problems in AI; for instance, those captured in Blocks World. The people building physical robots learned nothing."
- Marvin Minsky
(Related: People, Failure, Building, Deep, Nothing, Problems, World)
"Failure has gone to his head."
- Wilson Mizner
(Related: Failure)
"All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing."
- Moliere
(Related: History, Books, Dancing, Leaders, Mankind, Skill)
"My life has been nothing but a failure."
- Claude Monet
(Related: Life, Failure, Nothing)
"With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly."
- Gordon Moore
(Related: Opportunity, Progress, Failure, Engineering, Want)
"A love of nature is a consolation against failure."
- Berthe Morisot
(Related: Love, Nature, Failure)
"A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life."
- Christopher Morley
(Related: Life, Failure, Man, Woman)
"Before this government came to power, many failing schools were simply allowed to drift on in a pattern of continuing failure. The government is determined to break that pattern and is successfully doing so."
- Estelle Morris
(Related: Government, Power, Failure, Schools)
"There is always time for failure."
- John Mortimer
(Related: Time, Failure)
"Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost."
- Johann Most
(Related: Failure, Cause, Freedom)
"War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination."
- Bill Moyers
(Related: Imagination, War, Failure, Self)
"There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see."
- Malcolm Muggeridge
(Related: Failure, Darkness)
"Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training."
- Lewis Mumford
(Related: Art, Life, Being, Practice, Preparation, Training, Trials)
"Failure to prepare is preparing to fail."
- Mike Murdock
(Related: Failure)
"The time I had waited probably made the difference between success and failure."
- Anna Neagle
(Related: Success, Time, Failure, Difference)
"Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles."
- Jawaharlal Nehru
(Related: Failure, Forget, Ideals, Objectives, Principles)
"My Brat Pack buddies and I didn't exactly handle celebrity very well. Success at an early age is far more difficult to handle than failure."
- Judd Nelson
(Related: Age, Success, Failure, Celebrity)
"With failure, you just try again."
- Judd Nelson
(Related: Failure)
"But if you look at WorldCom, which is the biggest failure to date, they grew dramatically, they were buying companies that were bigger than they were and they were doing it off inflated stock."
- Don Nickles
(Related: Failure, Buying)
"Is the proposed operation likely to succeed? What might the consequences of failure? Is it in the realm of practicability in terms of material and supplies?"
- Chester W. Nimitz
(Related: Failure, Consequences, Succeed)
"As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything."
- Albert J. Nock
(Related: Life, Failure, Cheerfulness, Discontent, Parents, Poor)
"The Bush Administration's failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world."
- Barack Obama
(Related: Friendship, Peace, Failure, Israel, World, Wrong)
"In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."
- Barack Obama
(Related: Failure, America, Europe, Leading, World)
"It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes."
- Flannery O'Connor
(Related: Old)
"Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach."
- Roger von Oech
(Related: Work, Opportunity, Failure, Benefits, First)
"Most people think of success and failure as opposites, but they both are products of the same process."
- Roger von Oech
(Related: Success, People, Failure, Opposites)
"The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure."
- Ben Okri
(Related: Imagination, Failure, Artist, Tools, Will)
"It must not be forgotten in fairness to the National Government that apartheid is not just a policy of oppression but an attempt - in my opinion an attempt doomed to failure - to find an alternative to a policy of racial integration which is fair to both white and black."
- Harry Oppenheimer
(Related: Government, Policy, Failure, Opinion, Oppression)
"Don't think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success."
- Robert Orben
(Related: Success, Time, Failure)
"Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy."
- P. J. O'Rourke
(Related: Politics, Failure, Hope, Ideology, Journalism, Joy)
"There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success."
- John Osborne
(Related: Success, Failure, Waiting)
"Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Success, Fear, Failure, Presidency, Will)
"Success is never final, but failure can be."
- Bill Parcells
(Related: Success, Failure)
"At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it."
- Gordon Parks
(Related: Talent, Fear, Failure, Fight, First)
"In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Failure, Habit, Eye, Sense, World)
"Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are."
- Norman Vincent Peale
(Related: Success, Attitude, Failure, Defeat, Fact, May)
"What we've got here is a failure to communicate."
- Donn Pearce
(Related: Failure)
"When I got Jacob's Latter, I was nervous because I felt I wasn't allowed to fail. I felt that they were waiting for one little failure and that would prove them right and I'd be,"out of there.""
- Elizabeth Pena
(Related: Failure, Right, Waiting)
"I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice - in giving a failure another chance."
- James Cash Penney
(Related: Men, Failure, Chance, Giving)
"Failures are like skinned knees, painful but superficial."
- Ross Perot
"Well, I was lucky enough to be involved in about 19 failures at an early age, so I'm realistic about the success I'm having and how quickly it can go away. What's important is to be smart about it."
- Matthew Perry
(Related: Success, Age)
"The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure."
- Laurence J. Peter
(Related: Failure, Content, Question)
"It breaks my heart to see these young, really talented bands getting chewed up into the system. I remember a time if you'd signed to a major label it was such a sell out! But now... unless you've signed to a big label, you're a failure now."
- Mike Peters
(Related: Time, Heart, Failure, Now)
"The world is divided into two categories: failures and unknowns."
- Francis Picabia
(Related: World)
"I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure."
- T. Boone Pickens
(Related: Failure)
"I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure."
- T. Boone Pickens
(Related: Failure)
"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford
(Related: May)
"Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford
(Related: May)
"If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford
(Related: Chance, May, Mistakes)
"Outward failure may be a manifested variant of inward success."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Success, Failure, May)
"Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day."
- Gifford Pinchot
(Related: Progress, Failure, Conservation, Day, Misery, Practice, Prosperity, Will)
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching, I've learned from making mistakes."
- Rick Pitino
(Related: Failure, Coaching, Mistakes)
"We create success or failure on the course primarily by our thoughts."
- Gary Player
(Related: Success, Failure, Thoughts)
"You accept failure as a possible outcome of some of the experiments. If you don't get failures, you're not pushing hard enough on the objectives."
- John Poindexter
(Related: Failure, Objectives)
"The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure."
- Sydney Pollack
(Related: Failure, Film)
"I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures."
- Sydney Pollack
(Related: Truth, World)
"Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art."
- Ezra Pound
(Related: Art, Religion)
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."
- Colin Powell
(Related: Success, Work, Failure, Hard work, Learning, Preparation, Result, Secrets)
"Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence."
- Colin Powell
(Related: Success, Work, Failure, Hard work, Learning, Loyalty, Perfection, Persistence, Result)
"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."
- Colin Powell
(Related: Leadership, Failure, Care, Confidence, Day, Help, Leading, Problems, Soldiers)
"I think I've failed every test I've ever taken. If there was a failure I would have been it."
- Lisa Marie Presley
(Related: Failure)
"The one phrase you can use is that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan."
- Alan Price
(Related: Success, Failure, Fathers)
"Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement."
- Dan Quayle
(Related: Money)
"If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure."
- Dan Quayle
(Related: Failure, Risk, Succeed)
"The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain."
- Carroll Quigley
(Related: Failure, Christianity, Influence, Spain)
"I'm sure not afraid of success and I've learned not to be afraid of failure. The only thing I'm afraid of now is of being someone I don't like much."
- Anna Quindlen
(Related: Success, Failure, Being, Now)
"The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female."
- Anna Quindlen
(Related: Marriage, People, Failure)
"How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood."
- Harold Ramis
(Related: Success, Failure, Childhood)
"Ken Lay has, does and will continue to accept responsibility for the fall of Enron. He was the man at the controls. But failure is not a crime."
- Michael Ramsey
(Related: Failure, Crime, Enron, Man, Responsibility, Will)
"Well first of all it's a business and it's a tough business, and you have to have the strength to survive all the set backs all the failures that make this a mean business, that's getting meaner and meaner every year in my opinion."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Business, Strength, First, Opinion)
"Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe."
- Sumner Redstone
(Related: Success, Failure, Frustration)
"First of all we have to recognize that despite all the problems - and in some cases failures - that this regime has been much more successful, much more resilient, than people had anticipated."
- Mitchell Reiss
(Related: People, Successful, First, Problems)
"Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others."
- Jules Renard
(Related: Success, Failure, Laziness, Punishment)
"But if you have a solid walk with the Lord, then you won't fear that failure."
- Cliff Richard
(Related: Fear, Failure)
"There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible."
- Elliot Richardson
(Related: Failure, Sense, Service)
"Failure is not fatal; victory is not success."
- Tony Richardson
(Related: Success, Failure, Victory)
"I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault."
- Branch Rickey
(Related: Courage, Failure, Strength, Children, Fault, Respect, Want)
"I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure."
- Alan Rickman
(Related: Success, Failure, Court, Desire, Want)
"His failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is."
- Bridget Riley
(Related: Time)
"There is no such thing as failure. There are only results."
- Tony Robbins
(Related: Failure, Results)
"I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy."
- Tony Robbins
(Related: Failure, Frustration, Living, Now, Past)
"In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain."
- Frederick William Robertson
(Related: Work, Sacrifice, God, Failure, Word, World)
"Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure."
- Knute Rockne
(Related: Failure)
"Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day."
- Jim Rohn
(Related: Failure, Day, Errors)
"Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day."
- Jim Rohn
(Related: Failure, Day, Errors, Judgment)
"You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work."
- Dave Van Ronk
(Related: Work, Success, Failure)
"You always pass failure on your way to success."
- Mickey Rooney
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: Failure, Victory, Defeat, Poor, Rank, Spirits, Twilight)
"If anything characterizes the cultural life of the seventies in America, it is an insistence on preventing failures of communication."
- Richard Rosen
(Related: Life, America, Communication)
"We can't have a failure in Iraq, but we also can't be there for the next 10 years because if we are, it's going to become, I think, a failure in and of itself."
- Dennis Ross
(Related: Failure, Iraq, Years)
"I believe only in art and failure."
- Jane Rule
(Related: Art, Failure)
"Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral."
- Rosalind Russell
(Related: Success, Failure, Public)
"Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding."
- Burt Rutan
(Related: Failure, Testing, Understanding)
"It takes two to make a marriage a success and only one to make it a failure."
- Herbert Samuel
(Related: Marriage, Success, Failure)
"All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure."
- Carl Sandburg
(Related: Failure, Actions)
"The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success."
- David Sarnoff
(Related: Success, Failure, Difference, Will)
"In a total work, the failures have their not unimportant place."
- May Sarton
(Related: Work)
"All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: Failure, Actions)
"Failure is always an option."
- Adam Savage
(Related: Failure)
"And in reality, I don't think it's a real documentary. It's more a story of her life. It's a story of survival. It's a story of the time in which she lived. The story of success and failure."
- Maximilian Schell
(Related: Success, Time, Life, Failure, Survival, Reality)
"One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community, and especially the counterterrorism community, is to assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's because he can't or because we've defeated him."
- Michael Scheuer
(Related: Intelligence, American, Community)
"Our failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thus far has been deeply troubling, and our intelligence-gathering process needs thorough and unbiased investigation."
- Adam Schiff
(Related: Intelligence, Failure, Destruction, Investigation, Iraq, Needs, Weapons)
"Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature."
- Phyllis Schlafly
(Related: Nature, Failure, Feminism, Human nature)
"If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless."
- Robert H. Schuller
(Related: Failure, Possibility, Victory)
"Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet."
- Robert H. Schuller
(Related: Failure)
"Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure."
- Charles Schumer
(Related: Failure)
"Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
(Related: Failure, Succeed)
"I just think that it's maybe fashionable today to try to take individual actions and individual failures and take the broadest possible brush and try to paint a company."
- Lee Scott
(Related: Actions, Company, Today)
"Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities."
- Walter Scott
(Related: Business, Success, Attitude, Failure)
"I failed first grade, which is my biggest problem. You always feel like a failure, like you're stupid."
- Amy Sedaris
(Related: Failure, First)
"No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success; If he thinks he is a winner, then he is."
- Robert Service
(Related: Success, Failure, Man)
"In retrospect there were failures enough to go around. There were failures before the storm and failures after the storm."
- Jeff Sessions
"I think it's one of the main negative emotional ingredients that fuels show business, because there's so much at stake and the fear of failure looms large."
- Garry Shandling
(Related: Business, Fear, Failure, Negative)
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Work)
"Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Son, Idea, Failure, Will)
"My reputation grows with every failure."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Failure, Reputation)
"We go there with confidence, but we know there is a very fine line between success and failure in this game."
- Alan Shearer
(Related: Success, Failure, Confidence)
"As kids we're not taught how to deal with success; we're taught how to deal with failure. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If at first you succeed, then what?"
- Charlie Sheen
(Related: Success, Failure, First, Kids, Succeed)
"You will be a failure, until you impress the subconscious with the conviction you are a success. This is done by making an affirmation which "clicks.""
- Florence Scovel Shinn
(Related: Success, Failure, Affirmation, Conviction, Will)
"Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement."
- Florence Scovel Shinn
(Related: Work, Achievement, Failure, Vision, Accomplishment, Discouragement)
"I understand the harsh feelings and sentiments from my opponents and their supporters because I myself have been defeated twice in my political life in the past and I understand very well it is hard to accept your own failure."
- Chen Shui-bian
(Related: Life, Feelings, Failure, Opponents, Past)
"Success is not forever and failure isn't fatal."
- Don Shula
(Related: Success, Failure)
"There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient."
- Sivananda
(Related: Time, Now, Will)
"Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future."
- Sivananda
(Related: Depression, Future, Grief, Mind, Mistakes, Past, Regret, Will)
"A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying."
- B. F. Skinner
(Related: Mistake, Failure, Circumstances, May, Trying)
"Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success."
- Mark Skousen
(Related: Society, Success, Failure, Defeat, Tax, State, Taxation, World)
"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."
- Samuel Smiles
(Related: Wisdom, Success, Mistake, Failure, Discovery, Will)
"It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done."
- Samuel Smiles
(Related: Men, Mistake, Success, Failure, Advice, Example, Study, Succeed)
"Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something."
- Frederick Smith
(Related: Fear, Failure, Reason)
"The future of Conservatism lies in our beliefs and values, not by throwing them away. We need to shed associations that bind us to past failures, but hold faith with those things that make us Conservatives."
- Iain Duncan Smith
(Related: Faith, Values, Beliefs, Conservatism, Future, Lies, Past)
"I'm very comfortable with failure. I'm very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people."
- Steven Soderbergh
(Related: People, Failure, Being)
"Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Failure, Judgment, Radical, Sensibility, Wrong)
"We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people."
- Mira Sorvino
(Related: Love, People, Fear, Failure, Struggle)
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
- Thomas Sowell
(Related: Failure, Socialism)
"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them."
- Thomas Sowell
(Related: Trust, People, Failure)
"The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement."
- Anna Garlin Spencer
(Related: Women, Talent, Genius, Achievement, Failure, Ambition, Effort, First, Rank)
"It would be great to be able to pass on to someone all of the successes, the failures, and the knowledge that one has had. To help someone, avoid all the fire, pain and anxiety would be wonderful."
- Sylvester Stallone
(Related: Knowledge, Anxiety, Fire, Help, Pain)
"Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure."
- Sylvester Stallone
(Related: Success, Failure)
"I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don't know if I'm the monarch of all I survey."
- Sylvester Stallone
(Related: Fear, Failure, Expectations, Future, Past)
"A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself."
- Gertrude Stein
(Related: Failure, End)
"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
- John Steinbeck
(Related: Love, Men, Success, Quality, Failure, Honesty, Egotism, Feeling, First, Generosity, Greed, Kindness, Self, Understanding)
"You find that all men are successes or failures. Success is the stamp of truth. I will say all men who fail to place their feet on the dome of facts do so by not sieving all truth and throwing the faulty to one side."
- Andrew Taylor Still
(Related: Men, Success, Truth, Facts, Feet, Will)
"The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again."
- Ben Stiller
(Related: Failure, Acting, Career, Writing)
"That sense of failure, I don't know where people put it who don't write songs and aren't able to emote physically. It must go somewhere."
- Sting
(Related: People, Failure, Sense, Songs)
"Like success, failure is many things to many people. With Positive Mental Attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again."
- W. Clement Stone
(Related: Experience, Success, People, Attitude, Failure, Positive, Thoughts, Learning, Order)
"I think our failure in the production of good town churches of distinctive character must have struck you often, as it has me, when contrasted with our comparative success in country churches."
- George Edmund Street
(Related: Success, Character, Failure, Churches, Country, Production)
"After that he turned to the question of invading England. Hitler said that during the previous year he could not afford to risk a possible failure; apart from that, he had not wished to provoke the British, as he hoped to arrange peace talks."
- Kurt Student
(Related: Peace, Failure, England, Question, Risk)
"If you're 40 years old and you've never had a failure, you've been deprived."
- Gloria Swanson
(Related: Failure, Old, Years)
"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody."
- Herbert Bayard Swope
(Related: Success, Failure, Formula)
"Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man."
- William Howard Taft
(Related: Failure, Credit, Man, May, Weakness)
"I didn't fear failure. I expected failure."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Fear, Failure)
"I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Success, Father, Brother, Failure, Hope, Rejection)
"Most of the work performed by a development engineer results in failure."
- Koichi Tanaka
(Related: Work, Development, Failure, Results)
"Civilization is a failure. We need to think what we can do together in love and peace."
- Serj Tankian
(Related: Love, Peace, Civilization, Failure)
"So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman."
- Allen Tate
(Related: Life, Failure)
"It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure."
- James Taylor
(Related: Failure, Relationships, Years)
"The moral turpitude of the boys of today appears to center in their failure to concentrate on any particular objective long enough to obtain their maximum results."
- Major Taylor
(Related: Failure, Boys, Results, Today)
"America's most dangerous diseases have developed an immunity to politics. We suffer not from a failure of political organization or power, but a failure of love."
- Cal Thomas
(Related: Love, Politics, Power, Failure, America)
"People accuse me of being Methody, but I'm not at all. The one thing I don't want people to see is me. I don't want them to be able to recognize my faults and failures and qualities, and I won't use those things to spark off emotions or to illustrate."
- Kristin Scott Thomas
(Related: People, Being, Emotions, Faults, Want)
"Catastrophes are often stimulated by the failure to feel the emergence of a domain, and so what cannot be felt in the imagination is experienced as embodied sensation in the catastrophe."
- William Irwin Thompson
(Related: Imagination, Failure, Catastrophes)
"He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being."
- Paul Tillich
(Related: Failure, Being)
"The miserable failures of capitalist economies in the Great Depression were root causes of worldwide social and political disasters."
- James Tobin
(Related: Causes, Depression, Disasters)
"The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia."
- Hideki Tojo
(Related: Failure, America, Prejudice, Reason)
"Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed."
- Lily Tomlin
(Related: Opportunity, Failure, Wishes)
"A life which does not go into action is a failure."
- Arnold J. Toynbee
(Related: Life, Action, Failure)
"My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States."
- Harry S. Truman
(Related: Father, Failure, President, states, United)
"A film's success or failure is strictly on the director's shoulders."
- Robin Tunney
(Related: Success, Failure, Film)
"I think somehow you need to get to a certain point in your life where the notion of failure is absurd."
- Jeff Tweedy
(Related: Life, Failure)
"Y'know, the real reason why I was such a failure in the sense of being unable to make any sort of a living was because I was really not motivated. I had no motivation."
- Paul Twitchell
(Related: Motivation, Failure, Being, Living, Reason, Sense)
"People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure."
- Lao Tzu
(Related: People, Failure, Beginning, End, Succeed, Will)
"Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something."
- Morihei Ueshiba
(Related: Success, Mistake, Failure, Key)
"I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure."
- Andrew Vachss
(Related: Faith, Work, Failure, Financial, Literary, Value, Years)
"In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems."
- Wietse Venema
(Related: Life, Physics, Safety, Software)
"To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives."
- Denis Waitley
(Related: Forget, Self)
"Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success."
- Denis Waitley
(Related: Change, Success, Failure, Consequences, Direction, Forget)
"There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons."
- Denis Waitley
(Related: Mistakes)
"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."
- Denis Waitley
(Related: Failure, Being, Defeat, Delay, End, Nothing, Saying)
"This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: Failure, Vision, Churches, Democracy, Importance, Measure, Schools, Spiritual, Welfare)
"The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures."
- Barbara Walters
(Related: Sports, People, Accomplishments, Man, Nothing)
"At 49, I can say something I never would have said when I was a player, that I'm a better person because of my failures and disgraces."
- Bill Walton
"Failure to properly control our borders costs citizens in many ways: schools become overcrowded, medical resources are stretched too thin, other government services are overtaxed, and taxes increase further."
- Zach Wamp
(Related: Government, Medical, Control, Failure, Schools, Taxes)
"You have to risk failure to succeed. The important thing is not to make one single mistake that will jeopardize the future."
- An Wang
(Related: Mistake, Failure, Future, Risk, Succeed, Will)
"For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures."
- Mary A. Ward
(Related: Marriage, Fiction)
"The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism."
- Earl Warren
(Related: Time, Failure, Nation, Paradox)
"I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."
- Earl Warren
(Related: Sports, People, Accomplishments, First, Man, Nothing)
"If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."
- Thomas John Watson, Sr.
(Related: Success, Failure, Want)
"You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success - on the far side of failure."
- Thomas John Watson, Sr.
(Related: Success, Failure, Mistakes)
"Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital."
- Daniel Webster
(Related: Failure, Energy, Want)
"Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback."
- Len Wein
(Related: Thought, Positive, Catastrophes)
"Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Money, Class)
"Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."
- H. G. Wells
(Related: Failure, Community, Crime, End, Measure, State)
"Young players need freedom of expression to develop as creative players... they should be encouraged to try skills without fear of failure."
- Arsene Wenger
(Related: Fear, Failure, Expression, Freedom)
"None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature."
- Morris West
(Related: Nature, Failure, Corruption, Human nature, World)
"You learn just as much from your failures. Sometimes you love your failures even more."
- Tina Weymouth
(Related: Love)
"He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts."
- Richard Whately
"Every failure is a step to success."
- William Whewell
(Related: Success, Failure)
"But nobody predicted anything of this magnitude in terms of resistance. And in part, the magnitude of the resistance was spurred by our failures in reconstruction."
- Wayne White
"It's how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success."
- Charlotte Whitton
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Failure, Ambition)
"Failure's not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger."
- Billy Dee Williams
(Related: Character, Failure)
"Success and failure are equally disastrous."
- Tennessee Williams
(Related: Success, Failure)
"I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success."
- Tennessee Williams
(Related: Success, Work, Failure, Negative, Night, Play)
"The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent."
- Wendell Willkie
(Related: Home, Defense, Democracy)
"There may be some backward countries where the mass of the people are on a subsistence level and where, as an aftermath of wars or partial crop failures, the standard of living has to be drastically reduced, but this certainly is not the case in our prosperous nations."
- Charles E. Wilson
(Related: People, Countries, Living, May, Nations)
"You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give."
- E. O. Wilson
(Related: Failure, Goal, Needs, Right, World)
"If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable."
- E. O. Wilson
(Related: Successful, Failure, Effort, Humanism, Quest, Will)
"Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure."
- Earl Wilson
(Related: Success, Failure, Luck)
"Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness."
- Oprah Winfrey
(Related: Failure, Greatness, Queen)
"I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process."
- Oprah Winfrey
(Related: Failure)
"I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?"
- Debra Winger
(Related: Death, Experience, Failure, Choice, Sense, Years)
"Fear of failure has always been my best motivator."
- Douglas Wood
(Related: Fear, Failure)
"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."
- George Edward Woodberry
(Related: Failure, Defeat)
"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."
- John Wooden
(Related: Change, Failure)
"Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
- John Wooden
(Related: Success, Courage, Failure)
"If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery."
- Carter G. Woodson
(Related: Government, Failure, Slavery)
"Nixon's grand mistake was his failure to understand that Americans are forgiving, and if he had admitted error early and apologized to the country, he would have escaped."
- Bob Woodward
(Related: Mistake, Failure, Americans, Country, Error, Nixon)
"The failure of the system to deal quickly was attributable to Nixon's lying, stonewalling and refusal to come clean. So it took 26 months for the final truth to be known."
- Bob Woodward
(Related: Truth, Failure, Lying, Months, Nixon)
"And every now and then people find the bugs, and they interpret those as cool failures in the Sims terms. For them it's like a treasure hunt, you know."
- Will Wright
(Related: People, Bugs, Now, Treasure)
"The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination."
- Rosalyn S. Yalow
(Related: Leadership, Women, Failure, Discrimination)
"The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success."
- Paramahansa Yogananda
(Related: Success, Time, Failure)
"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street."
- Zig Ziglar
(Related: Failure)
"You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure."
- Zig Ziglar
(Related: Success, Failure)
"Remember that failure is an event, not a person."
- Zig Ziglar
(Related: Failure)
"I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure."
- Slavoj Zizek
(Related: Failure, Help)