Quotes on 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.

Author: Alvin Adams

When I was about 15... I made my first attempt as a leading lady, and was, of course, a complete failure.

Author: Maude Adams

The only risk of failure is promotion.

Author: Scott Adams

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.

Author: Rodney Alexander

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.

Author: Fred Allen

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.

Author: James Allen

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.

Author: Richard Allen

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?

Author: Aldrich Ames

Failure is impossible.

Author: Susan Anthony

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.

Author: Irving Babbitt

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.

Author: James Baldwin

I wasn't afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure.

Author: Anne Baxter

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.

Author: Xavier Becerra

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

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.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.

Author: Arthur Bloch

There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco... a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.

Author: Orlando Bloom

Never permit failure to become a habit.

Author: William Book

There's only one thing that can guarantee our failure, and that's if we quit.

Author: Craig Breedlove

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.

Author: Christie Brinkley

In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option.

Author: Zbigniew Brzezinski

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

Author: John Burroughs

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

Author: John Burroughs

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.

Author: Elias Canetti

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

Author: George Canning

At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives.

Author: Robert Capon

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.

Author: Rosalynn Carter

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.

Author: Rosalynn Carter

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.

Author: Michael Chertoff

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.

Author: Albert Claude

Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.

Author: Montgomery Clift

The only failure is not to try.

Author: George Clooney

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.

Author: Jimmy Connors

Failure doesn't kill you... it increases your desire to make something happen.

Author: Kevin Costner

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

Author: Doug Coupland

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

Author: Doug Coupland

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.

Author: Hart Crane

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.

Author: Quentin Crisp

You can't have any successes unless you can accept failure.

Author: George Cukor

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.

Author: Gavyn Davies

Failure is not a crime. The crime is not trying.

Author: Ron Dellums

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

Author: John Dewey

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.

Author: Shannen Doherty

Nothing fails like failure.

Author: Margaret Drabble

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.

Author: Alexandre Dumas

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Author: George Eliot

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.

Author: William Empson

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.

Author: Hans Eysenck

If you try to do your best there is no failure.

Author: Mike Farrell

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.

Author: Edmond Fischer

Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure.

Author: Errol Flynn

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

Author: B. Forbes

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.

Author: Boutros Ghali

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.

Author: Mickey Gilley

Laziness is a secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it's only kept a secret from the person who fails.

Author: Robert Half

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.

Author: S. Hayakawa

Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

Author: Lillian Hellman

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

Author: Ernest Hemingway

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.

Author: John Hersey

Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache, carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or greater Benefit.

Author: Napolean Hill

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.

Author: Napoleon Hill

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.

Author: Ruben Hinojosa

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

Author: Eric Hoffer

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

Author: Eric Hoffer

Students rarely disappoint teachers who assure them in advance that they are doomed to failure.

Author: Sidney Hook

I never see failure as failure, but only as the game I must play and win.

Author: Tom Hopkins

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

Author: Elbert Hubbard

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.

Author: Kin Hubbard

Failure is a word unknown to me.

Author: Muhammad Jinnah

Failure is a word that I simply don't accept.

Author: John Johnson

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

Author: Lyndon Johnson

I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.

Author: Michael Jordan

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.

Author: H. Judd

My biggest failure is I have too many to talk about.

Author: Dean Kamen

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

Author: John Keats

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.

Author: Charles Kettering

One failure is worth seven and a half successes.

Author: Eli Khamarov

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.

Author: Michael Korda

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.

Author: Harvey Korman

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.

Author: Henry Kravis

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.

Author: Mike Krzyzewski

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.

Author: Mike Krzyzewski

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.

Author: Tommy Lasorda

Even as far back as when I started acting at 14, I know I've never considered failure.

Author: Jennifer Lawrence

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.

Author: Jerome Lawrence

By virtually any measure, the record of the Republican Majority is an appalling failure.

Author: Sheila Lee

A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.

Author: Elmer Letterman

The failure of the Russian Socialist Republic will be the defeat of the proletariat of the whole world.

Author: Karl Liebknecht

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Author: Abraham Lincoln

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.

Author: Audre Lorde

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Author: James Lowell

I simply don't believe in failure. In itself, it doesn't exist. We create it. We make ourselves fail.

Author: Alice MacDougall

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.

Author: Melinda Marshall

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.

Author: Abraham Maslow

Not failure, but low aim is sin.

Author: Benjamin Mays

Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.

Author: Jim McMahon

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.

Author: John Mica

Failure has gone to his head.

Author: Wilson Mizner

Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.

Author: Johann Most

There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.

Author: Malcolm Muggeridge

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

Author: Mike Murdock

Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.

Author: Jawaharlal Nehru

With failure, you just try again.

Author: Judd Nelson

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.

Author: Don Nickles

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?

Author: Chester Nimitz

In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.

Author: Barack Obama

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.

Author: Walter Pater

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

Author: Donn Pearce

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."

Author: Elizabeth Pena

The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.

Author: Laurence Peter

I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

Author: T. Pickens

I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

Author: T. Pickens

Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching, I've learned from making mistakes.

Author: Rick Pitino

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.

Author: John Poindexter

The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.

Author: Sydney Pollack

I think I've failed every test I've ever taken. If there was a failure I would have been it.

Author: Lisa Presley

If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure.

Author: Dan Quayle

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.

Author: Carroll Quigley

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.

Author: Michael Ramsey

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.

Author: Elliot Richardson

There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.

Author: Tony Robbins

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.

Author: Tony Robbins

Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure.

Author: Knute Rockne

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Author: Jim Rohn

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Author: Jim Rohn

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.

Author: Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Author: Dennis Ross

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.

Author: Burt Rutan

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Author: Carl Sandburg

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre

Failure is always an option.

Author: Adam Savage

If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless.

Author: Robert Schuller

Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet.

Author: Robert Schuller

Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.

Author: Charles Schumer

Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed.

Author: Arnold Schwarzenegger

I failed first grade, which is my biggest problem. You always feel like a failure, like you're stupid.

Author: Amy Sedaris

My reputation grows with every failure.

Author: George Shaw

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Author: Susan Sontag

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Author: Thomas Sowell

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

Author: Gertrude Stein

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.

Author: Ben Stiller

If you're 40 years old and you've never had a failure, you've been deprived.

Author: Gloria Swanson

Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man.

Author: William Taft

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.

Author: James Taylor

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.

Author: Major Taylor

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

Author: Paul Tillich

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.

Author: Hideki Tojo

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.

Author: Denis Waitley

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.

Author: Henry Wallace