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Quotes About Failure

the failure and the betrayal are in the record book forever, and sum up, and condemn, forever, those descendants of a barbarous Europe who arbitrarily and arrogantly reserve the right to call themselves Americans.
~ James Baldwin
One cannot argue with anyone's experience or decision or belief. All my evidence would be thrown out of court as irrelevant to the main body of the case, for I could cite only exceptions. The South Side proved the justice of the indictment; the state of the world proved the justice of the indictment. Everything else, stretching back throughout recorded time, was merely a history of those exceptions who had tried to change the world and had failed.
~ James Baldwin
Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck." —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole
~ James C. Collins
tends to rivet our attention on the Icarus companies
~ James C. Collins
Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck." —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole1
~ James C. Collins
Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.
~ James C. Collins
A vitória aguarda aquele que tem tudo em ordem – ou sorte, como as pessoas costumam dizer. A derrota é certa para aquele que deixa de tomar as precauções necessárias a tempo; a isso as pessoas chamam má sorte." Roald Amundsen, Polo sula
~ James C. Collins
Catastrophic bad luck can kill a potentially great company, but good luck cannot make a company great. Luck doesn't build great companies that last; people do.
~ James C. Collins
It seems incredible, in retrospect, that any state could proceed with so much hubris and so little information and planning to the dislocation of so many million lives. It seems, again in retrospect, a wild and irrational scheme which was bound to fail both the expectations of its planners and the material and social needs of its hapless victims.
~ James C. Scott
We in the KGB are like Japanese in that we too agree the only sin is failure.
~ James Clavell
if you succeed or fail, what does it matter? The try will live forever!
~ James Clavell
The mind is apt to make some efforts to prove the fitness between its qualities and the condition of its owner, though it may often fail, and render that ridiculous which was only hated before.
~ James Fenimore Cooper
Forty-four. What is more important, fame or integrity. What is more valuable, money or happiness. What is more dangerous, success or failure. If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy. Be content with what you have and take joy in the way things are. When you realize you have all you need, the World belongs to you.
~ James Frey
Making good choices is a matter of life and death when you grow up in environments predisposed to violence, crime, and social failure, environments loaded with risk factors and often barren of developmental resources, where what you and your parents bring to the equation is crucial in an unforgiving way.
~ James Garbarino
By any objective measure, the modern business of "psychopharmacology"—the use of drugs to treat everything from anxiety and insomnia to schizophrenia itself—has to be judged a failure. Few patients, if any, are cured. The most violent manifestations of mental illness can be controlled, but with what long-term consequences, no one knows.
~ James Gleick
I wasn't exactly uncomfortable when I did my first comedy. I was just very aware of the risks; if you do a comedy that sucks, and you suck in it, then you won't get a chance to do it again.
~ Donnie Wahlberg
There is always the fear of failure, and if you struggle, you become nervous, and that's when the underdogs have an opportunity to create a surprise.
~ Ottmar Hitzfeld
There has been a failure to grasp how competing narratives fight for the attention of angry young Muslims, and we have grossly underestimated the appeal of the jihadist brand.
~ Maajid Nawaz
If I were to take an undergraduate chemistry exam, I would probably fail.
~ Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I had a pretty bad time when I was an undergraduate at Cornell University. I failed out of school. I was much, much heavier.
~ Victor LaValle
Ultimately, all human activities have as their goal the realization of happiness. Why, then, have we ended up producing the opposite result? Could the underlying cause be our failure to correctly understand the true nature of happiness?
~ Daisaku Ikeda
If a woman is successful, then she's deemed to be the exception that proves the rule. If a woman fails, well, we're all failures. That kind of underlying approach to our gender doesn't seem to me to have changed an iota.
~ Glenda Jackson
Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain's defence for the last 60 years... I will not allow this to happen on my watch.
~ Bob Ainsworth
While we are clear that it is right that those who work hard, generate wealth and create jobs for our country are rewarded, where failure is rewarded or people award themselves huge pay rises that bear no relation to performance or what their companies can bear, trust is severely undermined.
~ Chuka Umunna