Quotes About Failure

A failure remains a failure only if we refuse to learn from it. Any situation that teaches us greater humility, sobriety, wisdom about self and others, responsibility, forgiveness, depth of reflection, and better decision making -\-\teaching us what's truly important-\-\is not an ultimate failure. Sometimes what we deem a failure at the time it happens actually serves to foster a change within us that creates an even greater success down the road.

When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and I to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, 'So what did you guys fail at this week?' If we didn't have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he'd high-five me. What I didn't realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn't the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'I didn't try that because I was scared,' that is failure.

You know George W. Bush is a war-time president, he says - proudly. Guess what. War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure! Or a warlord. It's called a warlord in other countries. A war time president here. One man's ceiling I guess is another man's floor. George Bush is a warlord. He's a failure!

Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.

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.

You cannot achieve success without the risk of failure. And I learned a long time ago, you cannot achieve success, if you fear failure. If you're not afraid to fail, man, you have a chance to succeed. But you're never gonna get there unless you risk it, all the way. I'll risk failure. Sometimes, half the fun is failing. Learning from your mistakes, waking up the next morning, and saying 'Okay. Watch out. Here I come again. A little bit smarter, licking my wounds, and really not looking forward to getting my ass kicked the way I just did yesterday.' So now, I'm just a little more dangerous.

Failure instructs, failure improves. Failure shouldn't deter you.

Sovereignty is the term the Bible uses to describe God's perfect control and management of the universe. He preserves and governs every element. He's continually involved with all created things, directing them to act in a way that fulfills his divine purpose. That's why the most stressed-out people are control freaks. They fail at the quest they most pursue. The more they try to control the world, the more they realize they cannot. Life becomes a cycle of anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure. We can't take control, because control is not ours to take.

Success makes us intolerant of failure and failure makes us intolerant of success.

The inner experience of fallure is totally different than failure. Going to fallure means 100% commitment - you leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped, you never give yourself a psychological out. Failure means making a decision to let go, to be less than 100% committed, when confronted by fear, pain and uncertainty.

As the opportunity grows for unlimited growth and progress, the chances of failure increase. There is no such thing as a program that will provide security and growth and progress with no risk . . . even within the church. As freedom for unrestricted development is enhanced, the possibilities for failure are also increased. The risk factor is great.

When we are young the idea of death or failure is intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear. But we have also an unconquerable faith in our own stars, and in the impossibility of anything venturing to go against us. As we grow old we slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and that failure is in the nature of things, but then we do not much mind what happens to us one way or the other. In this way a balance is obtained.

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.

Embrace failure. Never never quit. Get very comfortable with that uneasy feeling of going against the grain and trying something new. It will constantly take you places you never thought you could go. This has been my mantra for years. I always remember I won't do things right on the first try. So failure is mandatory for success!

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.

I always assume that nothing that I make is going to be a success, that everything I make is going to be a failure - not a failure but not some huge box- office success. If something is an artistic success, I'll be happy, but I'll maybe be the only person that's happy.

We can only learn to deal with failure by actually experiencing failure, by living through it. The earlier we face difficulties and drawbacks, the better prepared we are to deal with the inevitable obstacles along our path.

I would say that failure to terraform Mars constitutes failure to live up to our human nature and a betrayal of our responsibility as members of the community of life itself

There is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will.

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.

Kipling said that Success and Failure are both imposters, and we should all listen to Kipling, if only because none of us are likely to know anybody else named Rudyard. But having been bitten in my life 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.

Rock bottom is an inability to cope with the commonplace that is so extreme it makes even the grandest and loveliest things unbearable...Rock bottom is everything out of focus. It's a failure of vision, a failure to see the world as it is, to see the good in what it is, and only to wonder why the hell things look the way they do and not some other way.

I train so hard to make sure failure doesn't happen. If I do everything I can, and run as fast as I possibly can and someone still beats me, I don't think of that as failure.

Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.

I will work day and night to avoid failure, but if I can't, I'll pick myself up the next day. The most important thing for entrepreneurs is not to be put off by failure.

I don't think something is a failure if you put your all into it. I'm a big fan of the saying, "Nothing beats a failure but a try."

Make a decision! Failure to act is often the biggest failure of all.

You're always on duty because you're in a constant state of observation. That's one of the challenges of being a comedian. I think one of the other challenges is that, whether we like it or not, it's a profession that requires failure. It doesn't just encourage failure. It requires it because it's all trial and error. You need to know what doesn't work to know what works.

The person who achieves spectacular failure has at least attempted something bold. Failure is a temporary condition. Success is likewise temporary. Life, itself, is temporary - so quit hesitating. Do something!

At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren't where you want to be, you will always be a failure.

Never admit the possibility of failure, or speak in a way that infers failure as a possibility.

Honesty is about the scars. Its about the blemishes. But its more than just bragging about failure, which could be a form of ego. Its about truly helping people.

War is the greatest failure of mankind.

Failure is a big part of a free market's success. People fail to live up to their potential, or to carry out all their good intentions, in all kinds of economic and political systems. Capitalism makes them pay a price for their failures, while socialism, feudalism, fascism and other systems enable personal failures, especially by those at the top, to be ignored.

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

Failing at something is one thing, but Buddhism tells us that it is up to us how we interpret that failure [Buddhism] a philosophy and way of life that resonates with me I identify with it. I agree with so much of the sentiment behind it. I enjoy the liberating effect it's had on me to get back into the game Buddhism, with its concepts of karma and rebirth, have freed me from the twin fears of death and life without rugby, like life, will also come to an end.

To say what we should be or do and not link it with a clear exposition of what God has done about our failure to be or do perfectly as He wills is to reject the grace of God and to lead people to lust after self-help and self-improvemen t in a way that, to call a spade a spade, is godless.

Success is better than failure; an attempt is a better attempt, it is better as an attempt, if competent than if incompetent; and it is better to succeed through competence - aptly - than through sheer luck.

Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.

Every sin flows from the failure to treasure the glory of God above all things.

When you taste super-success after tasting super-failure, there is huge relief.

A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war.

The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.

Failure is just a few seconds away from success.

Karma is the root cause of success and failure in every aspect of life.

With software products, it is usual to find that the software has major `bugs' and does not work reliably for some users... The lay public, familiar with only a few incidents of software failure, may regard them as exceptions caused by exceptionally inept programmers. Those of us who are software professionals know better; the most competent programmers in the world cannot avoid such problems.

For me, losing a tennis match isn't failure, it's research.

The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.