Failure Quotes

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

Every failure is a step to success.

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference and a longer view and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm; it mocks hope; it pardons shortcomings; it consoles failure. It recommends moderation.

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.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

You've got many refinements. I don't think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with.

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.

I'm definitely happy with the way my career has gone, the success; but I even feel glad that I've experienced some failure in my life. That gives you perspective and humility about this business; it's good to realize that you're always just one movie away from not being in Vogue anymore.

Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.

The real tragedy of life is not in being limited to one talent, but in the failure to use that one talent.

There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

General Failure's Fault. Not Yours.

Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.

I’m so obsessed with this theme that I actually keep a “failure file.” What stands out for me in the biographies of Faulkner and Fitzgerald are the months and years they wasted out in Hollywood, getting sodden over their squandered gifts. Cyril Connolly, one of the most distinguished critics of his day, made his name with a book, Enemies of Promise, that elegiacally bemoaned his lack of distinction. And the novelist Paul Auster writes in his memoir, Hand to Mouth, “In my late twenties and early thirties, I went through a period of several years when everything I touched turned to failure.” Ah!

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

There is no Gain in the world: so be it: but neither is there any Loss. There is never any failure to this infinite freshness of life, and the ancient novelty is forever renewed. We realize the world better if we imagine it, not as a Progress to Prim Perfection, but as the sustained upleaping of a Fountain, the pillar of a Glorious Flame. For, after all, we cannot go beyond the ancient image of Heraclitus, the Ever-living Flame, kindled in due measure and in the like measure extinguished. That translucent and mysterious Flame shines undyingly before our eyes, never for two moments the same, and always miraculously incalculable, an ever-flowing stream of fire. The world is moving, men tell us, to this, to that, to the other. Do not believe them! Men have never known what the world is moving to. Who foresaw--to say nothing of older and vaster events--the Crucifixion? What Greek or Roman in his most fantastic moments prefigured our thirteenth century? What Christian foresaw the Renaissance? Who ever really expected the French Revolution? We cannot be too bold, for we are ever at the incipient point of some new manifestation far more overwhelming than all our dreams. No one can foresee the next aspect of the Fountain of Life. And all the time the Pillar of that Flame is burning at exactly the same height it has always been burning at! The World is everlasting Novelty, everlasting Monotony. It is just which aspect you prefer. You will always be right.

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.

Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure.

The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. . . . Civilisation is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilisation, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilisation there is always an element of unrest. For sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilised order survives on its merits, and is transformed by its power of Recognizing its imperfections.

Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal.

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

You always pass failure on the way to success.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

Success is never final, but failure can be.

Anytime some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink.

Are you planning to fail? A lack of planning is also commonly referred to as a planning for failure!

You shouldn't be afraid of failure - when something fails, you think, 'What did I learn from that experience? I can do better next time.' Then kill that project and move on to the next. Don't get disappointed.

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.

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.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

The only real failure in life is one not learned from.

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.

That's the conundrum of cartoon stripping, as opposed to political cartoons. When your anger is the driving force of your drawing hand, failure follows. The anger is OK, but it has to serve the interests of the heart, frankly.

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.

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.

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts.

Success comes when people act together failure tends to happen alone.

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

So many financial dreams are thwarted by the failure to act upon good intentions.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

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!

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.

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don't be afraid to fail.

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.

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.

In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option. We need to change this attitude toward failure - and celebrate the idea that only by falling on our collective business faces do we learn enough to succeed down the road.

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.

If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about 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?

I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

I love Rauschenberg. I love that he created a turning point in visual history, that he redefined the idea of beauty, that he combined painting, sculpture, photography, and everyday life with such gall, and that he was interested in, as he put it, 'the ability to conceive failure as progress.'

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

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

But I look at failure as education. In that respect, I am so well-educated.

Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.

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.

It often happens that an early success is a greater moral hazard than an early failure.