Failure Quotes - Page 36

• The tragedy of life is not that a man loses but that he almost wins.

  Heywood Hale Broun

  Life, Motivation, Winning

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• The incompetent quickly throws himself into another impressive enterprise in order to escape his responsibility from previous disaster.

  George Chapman

  Responsibility, Order, Disaster

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• Individual misfortunes give rise to the general good; so that the more individual misfortunes exist, the more all is fine.

  Voltaire

  Giving, Individual, Fine

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• To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that shadow of a man which we call his reputation.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Sleep, Men, Dust

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• Many times through the ages, like as not the chance appears, but because of indecision, man's fond hopes are drowned in tears.

  Ted Turner

  Men, Tears, Age

  Ted Turner (2010). “Call Me Ted: The Autobiography of the Extraordinary Business Leader and Founder of CNN”, p.18, Hachette UK

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• It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

  Richard Steele

  Pain, Reflection, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.410

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• Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

  Samuel Butler

  Adversity, Men, People

  'The Way of All Flesh' (1903) ch. 5

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• Pure innovation is more gross than error.

  George Chapman

  Fear, Errors, Innovation

  George Chapman, N S. Brooke (1999). “Bussy D'ambois: George Chapman”, p.18, Manchester University Press

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• Failure too is a form of death.

  Graham Greene

  Death, Form

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• When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people's excuse for failure.

  Robert Townsend

  Leadership, People, Important

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• We don't want to go back to the same policies and practicies that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led to this catastrophe. We keep moving forward.

  David Axelrod

  Letting Go, Moving, Class

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• I think the greatest taboos in America are faith and failure.

  Michael Malone

  Faith, Thinking, America

  The Guardian (London), July 7, 1989.

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• And as for Mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows further disclosed.

  Francis Bacon

  Math, May, Statistics

  Francis Bacon (1765). “The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes”, p.125

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• The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.

  Henry Miller

  Perfect, World, Consciousness

  Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.246, New Directions Publishing

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• Being convinced one knows the whole story is the surest way to fail.

  Phil Crosby

  Zero Defects, Stories, Way

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• In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.

  Voltaire

  Country, Time, England

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• Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them.

  Sam Harris

  Wrong Answers, Problem, Natural

  Sam Harris (2014). “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• I consider failures to be the compost that feeds the better and best that is on its way.

  Tim Johnson

  Way, Compost

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• Failure means that you would not, or could not, pay for success. Success is a matter of sale. It can (most often) be bought by a large outlay--of hard forethought--of pains--of steadiness--of the golden wisdom coined from experience. But the figure is too high for most of us. We are too poor, or too slothful, to bring the price.

  Charles Buxton

  Pain, Mean, Often Is

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• If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself.

  Ferdinand Porsche

  Mistake, Doe, Failing

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• Good results are sometimes owing to a failure of judgment, because the faculty of judgment often hinders us from undertaking many things which would succeed if carried through without thinking.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Thinking, Owing, Succeed

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• It is a very common failing, never to be pleased with our fortune nor displeased with our character.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Character, Common, Failing

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• 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

  Funny, Humor, Sunday

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• Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.

  Julie Andrews

  Inspirational, Positive, Success

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• 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

  Islam, Wells, Dazzling

  "Bill Moyers Interviews Karen Armstrong". "NOW" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. March 1, 2002.

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